


Freelance Good Guys: Chains of Melody

by TheGreys (alienjpeg)



Series: Looming Gaia [4]
Category: Freelance Good Guys, Looming Gaia
Genre: Action/Adventure, Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Brainwashing, Cecaelias, Character Death, F/F, F/M, Fantasy, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, LGBTQ Female Character, Magic, Mermaids, Smoking, Transformation, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-03
Updated: 2018-05-03
Packaged: 2019-05-01 10:56:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 37,437
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14518974
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/alienjpeg/pseuds/TheGreys
Summary: On stormy nights, mermaids swim up the flooding rivers to terrorize the village of Laraine. When Alaine’s father falls ill, she must swallow her fear and confront these mermaids at their source. She sets out on a voyage that takes her much further than she bargained for. Will she ever make it home, or will she drift forever lost at sea?





	1. Mermaid Scales

**Author's Note:**

> This story can be read on its own, but it is technically part 4 of a series and will make a little more sense if you've read the following first:  
> Monster by Moonlight  
> The Perfect Shot  
> Flopper and the Whopper
> 
> Visit this post for concept art, lore, and more stuff about the world of Looming Gaia: http://mythicalshoes.tumblr.com/post/165447246045/looming-gaia-lore-masterpost

##  **[CHAPTER 1: MERMAID SCALES]**

 

     _SPRING, 5983_

 

     Deep in the Kingsfall Swamp, an old rowboat was fighting through tangles of duckweed. Sometimes the weeds were so thick, Alaine’s father had to slap at them with his machete to get their boat through. It was all worth it to get to the center of the lake, where hidden treasures were just waiting to be found.

 

     Sebastian was a lean-bodied man approaching his mid-30’s. A black goatee surrounded his lips and he covered his shaven head with a wide-brimmed hat woven from reeds.

 

     His little Alaine wore a hat just like it, and at the same size it dwarfed her. Rain poured down in streams from the forest canopy high above. It filled their boat—the boat of rotting wood that had more than a few leaks anyway—and it was Alaine’s job to scoop this water out.

 

     She was a spindly girl just shy of eight years old. Her golden-brown face was smeared with mud, her straight hair black as the mold growing on the sides of the boat. She and her father wore crude sleeveless cotton robes and sandals on their feet, for proper shoes would only fill with mud. She scooped bucket after bucket of murky water back into the swamp while Sebastian cast his nets.

 

     The nets had magnetic hooks attached to each corner. These heavy magnets sank to the bottom of the swamp, passed the weeds and brown murk, down to the mysterious depths where only one thing was certain: sunken treasure. But it was not gold and gems Sebastian sought here, not ivory nor precious artifacts.

 

     He gave the net a tug, grunted at its weight. With a toothy grin he exclaimed, “I think we hooked something good! All hands on deck, Allie!” His daughter dropped the bucket and stumbled to the other end of the boat. Clutching the net alongside Sebastian, they gave it a hard yank on the count of three.

 

     The haul was heavy indeed, threatening to tip the old boat as they tossed the dripping net inside. Mud and duckweed covered it like a shroud, obscuring whatever was within. Eagerly father and daughter ripped these pesky plants away and tossed them back into the water.

 

     To anyone else, the heap before them was “junk”. But Sebastian’s eyes lit up at the sight of it in all its rusty glory: a dworfen bicycle. He turned to Alaine and laughed, “Look at this funny bicycle. It’s just your size!” The little girl furrowed her brow, tilted her head to the side.

 

     “What’s a _bicycle_?” she asked. Sebastian began disentangling it from the net. It had two deflated rubber wheels, its original color lost to rust and wear.

“It’s like a, eh…It’s a contraption that people ride in Zareen Empire,” Sebastian explained. “The ground is flat and stony there. It’s not flooded like Laraine, so they use wheels instead of boats to get around.”

 

     Alaine’s expression was full of doubt. She could hardly imagine such a place. Her father glanced towards the sky to get his bearings. The sun was still rising in the east, so he pointed north and continued, “Probably washed down the river from Adelsheim or Viersen. Maybe even Zareen Capital.”

 

     The boat was starting to fill with water again. Alaine picked up her bucket and scooped it out once more. “Why do they throw all this neat stuff in the river? It just gets all icky and ruined.” she asked.

Sebastian tossed the net back into the water and shrugged. “The Zareenites live a very different life than we do. They don’t respect the land very much.”

 

     He offered a wistful little smile. “But the Empire is a place of wonders too. You can be anything you want to be. You can write books or sing songs all day, and people will give you gold to do it. Everyone’s got a good education and a toilet indoors. Not a bad place to be, I’d say!”

 

     Alaine’s eyes rounded. She blurted, “You could sing all day and that’s your job?”

“If you’ve got the talent, sure,” chuckled Sebastian. He tapped her nose with his finger, left a dot of mud. “And I know someone who does.”

 

     The girl furrowed her brow as she queried, “How do you know about those places?”

“I’ve been there, all up and down Zareen Empire. I grew up in Driza.”

“You did? Then why did you come here where it’s muddy and smelly?” the girl exclaimed, outraged by the whole notion.

 

     Sebastian began pulling up another net as he explained, “Well, I wasn’t like you. I was a bad kid. A _dumb_ kid. I caused too much trouble and then I had to leave.”

“You got in trouble?”

“ _Big_ trouble. I was selling stuff I wasn’t supposed to sell, to people the Empire didn’t like very much. And if I showed my face in Zareen lands again, they would lock me up in a little iron box and throw away the key.”

 

     Sebastian pulled another load of foreign trash into the boat. Tangled in his net was a derelict sewing machine, a leather work boot fit for a troll’s foot, and a big flopping fish. He tossed the fish back, for he knew if he bit into it he would only get a mouthful of plastic and toxic metals.

 

     “Daddy,” began Alaine, “if I went to the Empire, would they lock me up too?”

Sebastian shook his head. “No, Sweetheart. That’s why we took your mother’s last name!” He jested, but his smile quickly faded.

 

     “Mommy and Daddy are saving some money for you, so you can go to school there when you’re older. Then you can be anything you want to be. Just promise me you won’t be a criminal?” he looked at the girl with pleading eyes.

Alaine giggled, “I won’t! I wanna be a famous singer!”

 

     Her father patted her back and straightened her big woven hat. He told her, “Then that’s what you’re gonna be. You won’t be stuck in the mud forever, Allie, I promise you.”

 

*

 

     It was important to get home before dark, especially on rainy nights. It was nights like these, Alaine’s parents told her, that the aquarians crawled out of the water to cause trouble. So after a long day pulling salvage from the swamp, Sebastian and Alaine rowed back to their village with a boatful of rusty treasures.

 

     They dragged the vessel onto the muddy shore and tied it to a post. It sat there next to hundreds of others, a necessity to every villager for traversing this flooded region. Laraine was a construct of precarious rope bridges hanging between treehouses, slimy docks and filthy canals running dark with sewage.

 

     The smell of rot was oppressive to outsiders, but to the natives it was as natural as mud-caked sandals or a fungal infection. Life in Laraine was far from glamorous. It was dangerous, it was slimy, it was mucky and wet, wet, wet. Everyone would start their day dry and end it soaked to the bone, and the Fontaine family was no exception.

 

     Sebastian hauled his nets of treasure up a wooden staircase which spiraled up a mighty tree trunk. It sprouted from the swamp below, and built half-way up its mushroom-infested trunk was a modest treehouse. The walls were woven from waxy water-repellent grasses and fortified by wooden beams, the structure round in shape with a conical roof.

 

     Shortly behind, Alaine dragged the dworfen bicycle up the stairs. Sebastian pushed the creaky old door open with his shoulder and emptied his nets onto a bigger pile of junk stacked against the wall. Alaine leaned the bicycle against the pile as well before slipping off her wooden sandals.

 

     The sitting room was dim by the light of a single oil lantern dangling from the ceiling, and the air was hazy with smoke wafting up from Rene’s cigarette. She sat cross-legged on the floor, surrounded by a hoard of salvage that had claimed the furniture. She was a short, thin woman with the same golden-brown skin and black hair as Alaine. That hair was pulled into a messy bun and her body was swimming in oversized robes.

 

     Her eyes were bloodshot and her face was gaunt, a cigarette hanging between chapped lips. Her hands were busy with a mortal and pestle, grinding iridescent dragonfly wings into dust. Alaine dropped to her knees before her mother and beamed, “Mommy, Mommy! Guess what we found today!”

 

     Rene barely glanced up from her work as she queried flatly, “More junk?”

“A bicycle! Look at it, isn’t it weird?” the girl exclaimed. She pointed to the contraption sitting by the door.

“Lovely,” Rene muttered over her cigarette. “Now why don’t you find Mommy her fish eyes? They’re buried somewhere in your father’s mess, I’m sure.”

 

     Alaine set to work clambering over mountains of scrap while Sebastian approached Rene. He plucked the cigarette from her mouth and took a drag before greeting her with a kiss. The woman quickly snatched it back and told him, “I did what I could with dinner. I’m working with crumbs here, Seb.”

 

     Sebastian let out a little sigh. “I know,” he replied quietly. “I’m sorry. I’ll get some of this stuff melted down tomorrow, and that should—”

“I found the eyes!” Alaine called from somewhere in the junk heap. She appeared then, bringing a jar of black globes to Rene. They were suspended in some kind of dark goo.

 

     Rene took the jar and rustled her daughter’s chin-length hair. “That’s my little Allie-gator,” she praised with a grin. The jar let out a sharp stench when she opened it and dropped three eyes into the cauldron before her. Next came the powdered dragonfly wings and mysterious liquids from several unlabeled bottles.

 

     Rene waved Alaine away and said, “Now go eat your dinner, it’s getting cold. You too, Husband.” Alaine bolted off into the kitchen area, where another pot was waiting on the rickety wooden table. One of its legs was broken and propped up by a stack of moldy books.

 

     The girl lifted the lid off the pot and peeked inside. She wrinkled her nose, turned to her father and whined, “This smells icky! Can we have something else?”

“Alaine, be nice. Your mother did her best.” Sebastian told her, dipping a ladle in to spoon rice, frogs legs, and eyeless fish heads into a bowl.

 

     A dramatic sigh puffed from the girl’s nostrils. She poked at her food with wooden chopsticks, wishing her bowl was full of fried snake instead. Frogs and fish were peasant scraps! The two ate quietly while Rene concocted her next potion in the other room, occasionally muttering curses or clinking bottles.

 

     Alaine wore the same expression as the sad little fish heads in her bowl. She turned to her father and sheepishly asked, “Daddy? Is it my fault we’re poor?” The question caught Sebastian off-guard. He jumped a little, fumbled as he dropped one of his chopsticks.

“No, Sweetie, of course not! Why would you think such a thing?”

 

     With a little shrug, the girl mumbled into her soup, “You said you were saving money for me. If I went away, would you still have to eat icky soup?”

“Alaine…” her father began. He paused, shaking his head before he continued. “I’m sorry we’re having a hard time right now. But if that’s anyone’s fault, it’s mine. That’s why it’s very important that you go to school, okay?”

 

     Eyes downcast, Alaine remained silent for a moment. Finally she muttered, “Okay,” and busied her mouth with a frog leg.

 

*

 

     After dinner, the sun had fallen below the treetops and cast all of Laraine in thick, inky darkness. Rainfall roared against the shingled roof as Alaine settled into her hammock. Her parents’ hammock was just on the other side of the room, for in this culture, children shared a bedroom with their parents until adolescence.

 

     The custom wasn’t born from nothing. It was a response to the undine’s call which lured little girls to the bay. Alaine was lectured about this every single night through a lullaby. Rene was already passed out after drinking one too many of her own concoctions, so Sebastian tucked his daughter in and picked up the old lute hanging on the wall.

 

     He paced slowly around the room, strummed a simple melody and began to sing,

_“Alaine Fontaine of Laraine,_

_Beware, beware the arcane,_

_It drives you insane when it sings in the rain,_

_The ugly, the evil undine…”_

 

     “The last part doesn’t rhyme!” Alaine told him as she told him every night.

And every night Sebastian would strum a few more notes and sing, “Alaine Fontaine of Laraine, must you always _complain_?”

And Alaine would tell him, “That’s better,” before he kissed her goodnight and chained the front door shut.

 

     Because below the house, creatures were emerging from the reeking water to scour for prey. Their glowing yellow eyes pierced the darkness. Aquarian eyes, the eyes of mermaids, sirenes, and most fearsome of all: the mighty undine who bellowed their hypnotic call.

 

     The villagers of Laraine stayed inside on nights like these, when the aquarians prowled around their docks and bridges hoping to catch someone unawares. They called this an “Aquarian Haunt”. Mermaids would crawl onto shore where their tails would magically split into legs. Their webbed feet could be heard slapping against the walkways during their patrols.

 

     The mermaids were one of the few aquarians that had legs at all. The rest had but fish-like tails and dragged themselves about with their arms. Only when it rained like this could they safely slide over the planks, as too much grit would scrape off their precious scales.

 

     These aquarians were most infamous for stealing little girls. Little girls like Alaine Fontaine, whose eyes snapped open when she heard the undine’s droning song. Her parents were completely deaf to it, fast asleep as their daughter rose from her hammock and stumbled towards the door.

 

     Alaine was not asleep, yet she was not awake. Her eyes were unfocused and glazed over like the dead as she pressed her palms against the door. It did not budge, chained securely in place. There Alaine stood for the better part of an hour, unaware of the mermaids prowling just behind the door, unaware that Laraine was crawling with malicious aquarians, unaware of anything except the undine’s song.

 

     And when the song was over and the aquarians sank back into the swamp, Alaine blinked her dry, itchy eyes and found herself clawing at the front door of her house. She trudged back to bed and thought nothing of it, for it was just another rainy night in Laraine.

 

*

 

     The next morning, clear skies opened over the canopy. Little evidence was left from the aquarian invasion, save for muddy webbed footprints on the walkways. Sebastian loaded his rowboat full of as much scrap as it could handle, then he set off for the next village over. There was a blacksmith in Yong who bought scrap metals, though the journey was long and treacherous and Sebastian didn’t expect to make it home before dark.

 

     That meant Alaine would be spending the day with Rene, gathering medicinal ingredients around the swamp. Baskets were strapped to their backs and Rene carried a net on a pole, eyes carefully scanning the ground as they made their way through the shallow muck.

 

     They weren’t far from the village, but nowhere in Kingsfall Swamp was truly safe. Unsavory critters were hiding everywhere in plain sight. “Don’t step on bubbling mud,” Rene warned her daughter. “That’s where the peatcreeps hide. Now, watch closely for toads because I need about ten of them. Look for their black eyes.”

 

     Alaine treaded as lightly as she could, yet her sandals still sunk and squelched into the ground with every step. She had never known solid ground in her life, only soft soil, rickety docks and swinging bridges. Kingsfall toads had brown, bumpy skin that blended perfectly with the mud, but their eyes gave them away if one knew how to spot them.

 

     Alaine was an experienced toad-spotter with sharper vision than her mother. She exposed them left and right and Rene brought down her net. The bumpy creatures croaked and fidgeted in their baskets. Rene knew their distress could attract unwanted attention, so she turned to Alaine and said, “Allie-girl, why don’t you sing a pretty song for the nymphs?”

 

     Turning this way and that, Alaine saw only a forest of giant roots sprouting out from the muck. Orange fungus grew upon the bark that looked like little globs of honey. Some of the mushrooms had matured into big flat platforms where frogs and lizards liked to rest. “I don’t see anyone, Mommy,” she said.

 

     “You don’t see nymphs ‘till they want to be seen,” explained Rene, sweeping her arms in a circle. “But they’re all around and they’re always watching. Always listening too, and there’s no faster way to their hearts than music.”

 

     Made sense enough, Alaine supposed, so she cleared her throat and let her voice free. It flitted like gentle butterflies through the trees, only a calm melody with no lyrics. It was universal that way, the girl thought, and through nothing but tone and melody she would share her heart with all these secret listeners.

 

     Rene quietly netted another toad as her daughter sang. Only a couple more and then they would leave. This was not their domain after all—this natural place belonged to the Spirit of Gaia and they were but guests overstaying their welcome. And Gaia’s children had been watching indeed, heard Alaine’s song and couldn’t help but be part of it.

 

     Alaine gasped, fell silent when her own song echoed back to her. It was ringing out somewhere in the distance from a voice not her own. “Keep singing. They like it,” her mother told her, and reluctantly Alaine picked up where she left off. A third voice joined from behind, then another from the side.

 

     Before long, an invisible choir was singing along with the girl. Alaine turned around in circles trying to find them, but she only lost her footing and slipped. She shrieked as her palms sank through the soft ground and her face plopped right into the muck. Rene burst out into laughter before helping her up again.

 

     Alaine didn’t think it was so funny. Swiping the mud in her eyes, she blinked through the stinging blur. The choir seemed closer now, carrying her melody though she’d gone quiet. Rene dabbed at her daughter’s eyes with the dry hem of her shirt and whispered, “Don’t be scared, Alaine.”

 

     What she meant, Alaine didn’t realize until her vision was clear—and it seemed clearer than ever before. She could see them now, the singing nymphs, their dozens of glowing eyes blinking in the forest like fireflies. They were like mossy wooden ladies with branches extending from their heads, all topped with emerald leaves.

 

     Some stood freely and some were one with the trees, as if they’d been standing for so long that the trunks had enveloped them over time. Alaine sang to the forest and now the forest was singing back. The girl seized her mother’s hand, squeezed it tightly, but Rene was only smiling.

 

     “They’re dryads. They watch over the trees,” explained Rene. Alaine stared back at them, speechless and wide-eyed. Then their melody slowly tapered off to match her long silence.

Swallowing the lump of fear in her throat, Alaine took a deep breath and called out, “Thank you for singing with me!”

 

     She jumped as a round of applause and giggles erupted from all around. When Alaine blinked, some of the glowing eyes had disappeared. She turned around and more were gone, and when she turned back there were none left at all. The once singing, swaying tree-women lie still as death once more, camouflaged by the chaos of the wilderness.

 

     “You know,” said Rene, “they might have killed us if you sang poorly. I think you’re going to be a star after all.”

 

*

    

     Two days passed.

 

     Two anxious and uncertain days, for Sebastian did not return from Yong alone. Two Yongolite hunters rowed him back in their own vessel with news that he’d been bitten by a peatcreep. “He must have stepped right in its filthy maw,” they told Rene. “Damn near sucked the life out of him before we happened by.”

 

     They told her that their village healer had done what he could, but Sebastian’s condition was beyond his knowledge. They asked Rene where Laraine’s healer was and they would rush him there immediately, to which she screamed in a panic, “ _You’re looking at her!”_

 

     Alaine was shuffled outside the house for the day. There was nothing she could do to help as her mother frantically examined her pale, delirious husband. Peatcreeps were vile worm-like creatures that hid under the mud, just waiting for some unsuspecting meat to happen by.

 

     They looked like slimy tubes as thick as a man’s leg and half as long. They used their hundreds of hollow hook-teeth to latch on to flesh and engorge themselves with pint after pint of blood. All too often they were already full of fetid, diseased blood from their last victim which infected their next. Alaine had been warned her whole life not to step on the bubbles in the mud, and now she was angry.

 

     She was angry at her father for being so careless. She was angry at the peatcreeps for being so despicable. But most of all, she was angry at herself for being so useless. Now she was sitting on the edge of a dock with her friend Deanne, another human girl who was just a year older.

 

     They looked like sisters, people would say, though Deanne’s dark hair was long enough to braid. In a braid it was, the same way she wore it every day. She didn’t like to wear pants like Alaine, but rather her grandmother’s homemade dresses with fine floral embroidery. Alaine didn’t see the point in such fancy clothes. At the end of the day they’d be wet and dirty anyway.

 

     Usually they chased eachother over the wobbly bridges or played make believe. But today all Alaine could do was sulk and worry. She rested her elbows on her knees, hunched over like a wilted flower as she mumbled, “Dad just worked the rice farms before I was born. If it weren’t for me, he would have never gone to Yong and he would have never gotten sick!”

 

     Deanne’s eyes remained downcast, fingers fast at work braiding bluebell stems together in her lap. She replied, “That’s not your fault, Alaine.”

“Yes it is!” the Fontaine girl cried. She pounded her fists on her knees and went on, “He didn’t used to work so hard. Now he spends his days off pulling garbage out of the swamp just so I don’t have to. But I don’t care, Deanne!”

 

     Tears welled in Alaine’s eyes. They spilled over when she blinked and she left a smear of mud when she wiped them away. “I would live in a trash dump forever if it meant he’d just be okay! I don’t want him to die!”

 

     She broke down then, a mess of tears and sobs. Deanne pulled her into a tight squeeze. “Don’t cry, please? You’ll make me cry too. I never got to have a mom or a dad. All I have is my grandparents and they’re really mean.”

“Well, I don’t even have those!” sobbed Alaine. “What am I gonna do if he dies? What if mom drinks too many potions and dad’s not there to wake her up? I’ll have no one at all!”

 

     “Oh, Alaine…” Deane shook her head and sighed from the depths of her belly. She finished braiding the circlet of bluebells and placed it upon her dear friend’s head. A bluebell circlet was a symbol of grief in Laraine, something to tell others they should tread lightly on their feelings.

 

     Alaine learned to appreciate it, because when Deanne walked her through the village wearing this crown of mourning, people took pity and offered gifts. A couple coins here, a hug there, and plenty of kind words.

 

     Perhaps if her father didn’t make it and her mother drank herself to death, she would be adopted by Mr. Hut. He was the nice old man who owned the rice farm. “You will never be alone, Little One,” he told her. “You are a Larainian and we always care for our own.”

 

     He gifted her a big sack of rice when she showed up in her circlet, so heavy that she and Deanne had to carry it home together. It was more rice than Sebastian earned in a week working their farm.

 

     Deanne walked Alaine to her front door. They let the bag drop on the porch, all cluttered with overflowing scrap from the house. “Bye, Alaine. I hope your dad gets better soon,” Deanne told her somberly, trapping her in another tight hug. Alaine squeezed her back, then watched as she disappeared down the winding stairway to the docks.

 

     The bluebell crown still rested upon the Fontaine girl’s head. She decided she would wear it as long as she felt blue, and so she just may wear it forever. Sometimes her mother ground up these petals to make blue pigment. Perhaps it would turn her hair blue as well, and then people would really know how much she grieved.

 

     Alaine took a deep breath before going inside, fearful of what she may find. But it was the same scene as when she left: Sebastian lying in his hammock while Rene desperately flipped through her entire library of moldy books in search of a cure. She’d been so thorough that the kitchen table was slanted at an angle. The books beneath its broken leg were now sitting in a stack beside her.

 

     “I got some rice.” Alaine’s voice was but a peep over shuffling paper.

Rene’s eyes never left the pages when she snapped, “Not now, Alaine! Go play outside. Mommy needs to concentrate.” The girl lingered in the doorway for a moment. There was a glass ashtray by Rene’s feet filled to the brim with cigarette butts. She glanced down at her father, but he was hard to look at.

 

     His once bronze skin looked washed out, his color stripped like the paint off the bicycle. He only muttered feverish nonsense with weary eyes and sweat glistening on his brow. His lips were probably the driest thing in Laraine. Alaine had never seen him look so miserable.

 

     The girl crept into the room and took Sebastian’s hand. It felt cool and clammy. Tears spilled from her eyes once more and she gritted her teeth in fury, damning this horrid swamp and everything in it. Life in Laraine was dangerous. Everyone knew that. Children were stolen away by aquarians, alligators dragged people into the lake, mosquitoes spread malaria every summer…

 

     But those things only happened to _strangers_. They couldn’t happen to someone Alaine loved; that wasn’t fair! All her short life, she’d been eager to help. To simply be useful and earn her keep. So what could she possibly do now?

“Mommy,” she began, fighting back the pain in her voice. “Let me help.”

 

     Rene sat in a salvaged chair at Sebastian’s beside, flipped a page in her book so hard it nearly ripped. She replied behind her teeth, “There’s nothing you can do. Mommy will take care of it, just go play.”

“Please! It’s my fault he’s this way, so just tell me what you need!” the girl exclaimed. She gave Sebastian’s hand a squeeze and he rolled his head towards her, glazed eyes struggling to focus.

 

     Slamming her book shut, Rene shouted back, “I need you to leave me alone so I can figure out how to help your father without ripping scales _off a damned mermaid_!” Alaine flinched as she hurled the book across the room and swiped another one off the stack.

 

     “What do you mean? What about mermaids?” the girl sniffled.

Rene shook her head, slapped the back of her hand on a page and replied, “Far as I can tell, he’s got creepvenom’s disease. And according to this, the only medicine that can help him needs a mermaid scale. A damn _mermaid scale_ , can you believe it?” Outrage was creeping back into her voice.

 

     She let out a heavy sigh, chewed her lip before continuing, “God knows we’ll never get a hold of something like that, so you need to let Mommy study her books in peace so she can find another way. There _has_ to be another way, there just has to be…”

 

     The girl fell silent. Her stomach twisted in knots. Then a gentle squeeze enveloped her hand and she noticed Sebastian forcing a weak smile at her. “Gonna be okay, Allie,” he rasped. “We love you always, no matter what.”

 

     Alaine looked at the tower of heavy books by her mother’s side. Then she looked back at Sebastian, who simply didn’t have that kind of time. Her teeth pressed together so hard she felt they may shatter. She collapsed against her father and sobbed against his cheek, “I love you too, and I won’t let you die! I can’t, I _won’t_! You’re gonna get better ‘cause I’m gonna help, I promise!”

 

     With that, Alaine Fontaine swiped her tears away and bolted out the door. Rene’s book fell to the floor as she shot upright and rushed to the doorway. Her foot upended the ashtray and scattered its contents across the floorboards. “Alaine!” she frantically called after her daughter, who was already halfway down the stairs. “You better be back here before sunset! Don’t make me lose you too, I can’t bear it!”

 

*

 

     There were a couple thousand people in Laraine. It was the largest village in Kingsfall Swamp. _Someone_ had to have a mermaid scale or at least know where to get one, Alaine thought. She rushed across rickety robe bridges from neighborhood to neighborhood, from shop to shop, from home to home.

 

     She questioned everyone in her path, but they all told her the same thing: “It’s illegal to have mermaid scales. Stay out of trouble.” That wasn’t helpful at all. Alaine began scouring the docks closest to the water, peering between the boards for any scales that may have been scraped off during an Aquarian Haunt.

 

     She did find some scales, but when she brought them to a dock worker he told her they were from a sirene. “These are red,” he explained, “but mermaid scales are always green. They’re also round at the bottom, not pointed like this.”

 

     So Alaine’s search continued well into the late afternoon, even as the rain began to pour and everyone else took shelter indoors. The girl would not quit. Hunger, thirst, nor fatigue meant a thing to her until she found what she was looking for. Now the sunlight was nearly gone. Alaine’s tears stopped because she was too exhausted for them, but the frustration was still there like a vice on her chest.

 

     She was still scraping gunk from between the dock boards with a stick when Rene came to collect her. Alaine got a scolding for being out so late and letting herself get soaked, but it had little bite, for Rene was just as exhausted. They had plain rice for dinner and then it was time for bed.

 

     _“Alaine Fontaine of Laraine,_

_Beware, beware the arcane,_

_It drives you insane when it sings in the rain,_

_The ugly, the evil undine…”_

 

     Rene sang to her daughter as she tucked her in. The lute was left hanging on the wall. Only Sebastian knew how to play it, but right now he was simply in no condition.

 

     Great sheets of rain assaulted the roof, wind howling through the trees and bullying loud creaks of protest from the many old bridges. Rene folded her hands together and frowned down at her daughter, still wearing the bluebell circlet on her head. It was tattered and missing petals.

“Sweetheart,” Rene said gently, “I think it’s time to take that circlet off.”

 

     Alaine chose to ignore her. She pulled the blankets up to her chin and said flatly, “That last part didn’t rhyme.”

Rene let out a sigh. “Alaine Fontaine of Laraine…” she began, but then another voice finished for her, weak and labored.

 

     “Are you going to _complain_?”

 

     Sebastian’s wife and daughter turned to him with eyebrows arched high. He offered a weary smile and a raspy “good night” before settling his head back into his sweat-stained pillow. Alaine’s fists balled beneath her blanket. Tonight, the aquarians would haunt the village and mermaids would be among them.

 

     Those mermaids, with the gall to terrorize them so, and not even have the decency to leave a single scale behind! The undine, with the nerve to take Alaine’s mind away through the whole event. She would sneak out and scale a mermaid herself if she could, she thought, if only the undine’s song didn’t enchant her.

 

     But Larainians never fought the aquarians. They just hid inside their homes like cowards and once in a while, someone would get home too late or forget to lock the door, maybe pass out drunk, and a girl would go missing. Then they would have a cry before moving on with their lives, only to let it happen again and again.

 

     It made Alaine sick the more she thought about it. No one knew why the aquarians terrorized them this way. It was just the way it always had been and always would be if no one challenged them.

 

     Alaine decided then that she would be their challenger.

 

*

 

     Rene awoke with the sun to care for Sebastian and work her way through more books. She refused to see patients today, consequences be damned. There was enough rice to last all week and people who heard of the Fontaine’s predicament started coming by with donations.

 

     The more food, clothes, and toiletries piled up the more Alaine took offense. These people were helping them prepare to lose Sebastian. Every gift she received said to her, “Here’s a cushion for when your life falls apart.” They had no faith at all! It made Alaine so angry, she stormed out of the house in her tattered bluebell crown with a knife tucked in her rope belt.

 

     It was her mother’s kitchen knife. If it was good enough to scale a fish, it was good enough to scale a mermaid. But where were these aquarians coming from? Surely they didn’t live in the filthy waters of Laraine. They must have been travelling from somewhere up or down the river. The villagers would be no help, but Alaine knew who might be.

 

     Nymphs were always watching, always listening to everyone and everything. She would go into the forest and ask where the aquarians lived, sneak into their domain and terrorize them the way they terrorized her people. She would snatch an unlucky mermaid unawares, the way the mermaids snatched girls like her.

 

     Alaine moved swiftly down the docks. She passed faceless, bustling villagers who hadn’t a clue about her mission, but her dark intent was written all over her face. Only one person bothered to greet her and that was Deanne.

 

     “Hey, wait!” the older girl called, nearly stumbled over herself to catch up to her friend. But Alaine stopped for nothing, so Deanne trotted alongside her as she asked, “You look so upset. Are you okay?” The Fontaine girl’s fists were balled at her sides, her jaw set tight.

“I’m going to skin a mermaid,” Alaine told her flatly.

 

     Deanne’s thin brows nearly jumped off her face. “ _What_?”

“My dad needs their scales to get better,” Alaine clarified. “I can’t find any here, so I’m getting them straight from a mermaid.”

“Does your mom know about this?”

“No!” Only then did Alaine stop, turning to confront her friend. She told her quietly, “And if you tell her about this, we can’t be friends anymore. I’ll hate you forever!”

 

     Deanne threw up her hands. “Okay, okay! But…Alaine, they’re going to kill you. You can’t just attack a mermaid like that!”

“Why not? They attack us all the time."

“Yeah, but they’re not alone, you dummy!”

 

     Alaine stubbornly shook her head. “I don’t care,” she said, then she turned on her heel and continued on her warpath. Deanne paced her and reasoned, “Just ‘cause you’re mad doesn’t mean you have to be stupid, you know! Why are you always like this?”

“Like _what_?”

“You never know when to quit! People _die_ , Alaine!” Deanne seized her friend’s shoulders, forced her to stop in her tracks.

 

     She went on, nearly in tears, “My parents died and your dad will die, and there’s nothing we can do about it. You’ll die too if you do this, and then what about me? Who’s gonna be my best friend? Don’t do this to me!” Alaine stared Deanne down for a long moment. Her hands trembled at her sides, itching to slap her as much as embrace her.

 

     Instead she took a deep breath and told her slowly, concisely, “I promised him. I have to try.” With that, she wrenched her shoulders out of Deanne’s grip and marched on towards the edge of the village.

 

*

 

     The sky was clear and the forest was still, but Alaine knew better than to let her guard down. She had never been this far from Laraine by herself before. Not even her mother liked to venture this far into the wilderness, but here she was on her own, walking along the last shreds of a vague pathway.

 

     Here she stopped and set her voice free. She turned all around and addressed the whole forest with a song.

 

“ _I’m Alaine Fontaine of Laraine,_

_And I know this sounds insane,_

_But my poor daddy ails and he needs mermaid scales,_

_Won’t you help me save him, please!_

 

     Alaine gasped, jumped in surprise as a hundred fireflies burst to light in the shadow of the woods. But they were not fireflies. They were the glowing eyes of dryads, and every face they illuminated looked displeased. Several voices called out in unison, “The last part didn’t rhyme!”

 

     The Fontaine girl’s heart thumped in her chest. She stomped her foot in the mud and called back to them, desperate and tearful, “Don’t you understand? My heart’s in so much pain!” A low murmur spread through the forest from dryad to dryad. Alaine waited as they conversed in another language. It was like wind through the leaves.

 

     Then they made a decision and one stepped out of the darkness to greet her, bark creaking and groaning with every move. This dryad’s legs were like wooden stilts that split into roots at her makeshift toes, towering above Alaine ten times over. Long strips of moss dangled from the branches on her head, glistening with dewdropped spiderwebs and accented with a long-abandoned bird’s nest.

 

     Alaine froze in place as the dryad took long, sweeping steps towards her. She stopped before the girl and a smile crept across her dark lips high above. “Hello, Alaine Fontaine of Laraine,” she greeted. Her voice was low and smooth like the droning of bees. “I am Cypressca of Kingsfall Wood. I stand the tallest of my sisters and so I see all that happens here. Have you a question, it is I who has answers.”

 

     Her jaw fallen slack, Alaine finally closed it and cleared her throat. She stammered back, “Y-yes. Please, you have to tell me where the mermaids live. I need their scales to make medicine for my dad or else I’m gonna lose him!” Her voice was beginning to crack. The girl clasped her hands together and her knees hit the mud. “Please, please, _please_ will you help me?”

    

     “The mermaids…” Cypressca trailed off, as if considering her next words carefully. She tapped her long index finger against the side of her face, the tip hardened and pointed like a claw of bark. “Yes, when the rain floods the land, I see them swimming down this very path with a hideous undine in their company, singing a most vile melody. They go towards the humans’ village, there they stay for some time, and then they head back to the bay.”

 

     Alaine’s eyes rounded like coins. “What bay? Where?”

The dryad turned, pointed further down the muddy trail and replied, “Pass a thousand trunks in that direction and you will find yourself at Gryphon Bay.” She turned back to Alaine and furrowed her brow. “But I warn you, Child, if you go then you shall not return.”

 

     “I _will_ return,” insisted Alaine, “and I’ll return with their scales!”

Cypressca frowned, a sigh gusting from her nostrils like a gentle breeze. “Usually the aquarians lure girls like you into their clutches. But you—you with the lovely voice—serve yourself to them by your own will. Tell me, do you tire of your terrian life? Do you think it is better at sea?”

 

     “Well, nobody seems to believe in me around here. So maybe it is,” the girl grumbled. She pulled the knife from her waistband and held it up for all to see. “But I’m gonna prove you wrong, because I’ve seen my mommy gut a zillion fish with this knife and I can do the same!”

 

     The dryad’s yellow eyes looked doleful above her smile. After a pause, she said quietly, “If you will not hear my advice then at least hear this: love and melody are the mightiest weapons you have. Fight to remember that, for when you meet the bay you shall remember nothing else.”

 

     A quizzical expression crossed Alaine’s face. She opened her mouth to speak, but a voice from behind interrupted.

“Alaine! Alaine, wait!” it called. Startled, the girl whirled around and saw someone frantically slipping and sliding through the mud. It was Deanne, running towards her with a burlap sack slung over her shoulder.

 

     She stopped before Alaine and doubled over to catch her breath. “I…I can’t let…You go alone…” she panted.

With the raise of an eyebrow, Alaine questioned her, “You’re really coming with me? Aren’t you scared?”

Deanne took another moment to breathe, and then she shook her head and replied, “I was. But then I found this in my grandparents’ cupboard…”

 

     She set the sack down with a grunt. It had to weigh twenty pounds at least, and when she opened it up she revealed that it was twenty pounds of something like fine red sand. Alaine didn’t look any less confused, so Deanne explained, “It’s dragonsalt. My grandpa got it from the Empire a long time ago and he says aquarians hate it. That’s why he sprinkles it in front of the door when they visit.”

 

     Deanne twisted the bag shut and hefted it over her shoulder once more. “We can use it if things go wrong,” she said. Alaine’s eyes seemed to light up as she threw her arms around her friend, nearly knocking her off balance.

“I’m glad you’re here and you’re so smart,” she murmured.

A tiny smirk curled Deanne’s lips when she replied, “Yeah, well…One of us has to be.”

 

     Alaine whipped back around and blurted, “Hey Cypressca, this is my—” But then her smile faltered when she realized Cypressca was gone. Gone in spirit rather, for her body still stood in the pathway as a seemingly innocuous tree. Her face was hidden, pressed into the crook of her elbows with her arms raised high to meet her branches.

 

     If Alaine hadn’t seen her walking and talking just minutes before, she would have never assumed this tree was ever a dryad. All around the forest, her sisters’ firefly-eyes had gone dark, voices quiet and bodies still. Apparently they did not want to be seen by Deanne, perhaps because she had never offered a song or acknowledged their presence.

 

     “Who are you talking to?” Deanne asked, her brow wrinkled in concern. Alaine paused, decided she would respect the nymphs’ privacy and shook her head.

“Nevermind. Come on, I know where the mermaids live. It’s just further down this way.”

 

*

 

     As the girls moved on, the trail seemed to fall apart and give way to the chaotic order of nature. The mud was deep and the obstacles were many. They climbed over fallen trunks all covered in slimy moss. They made a bridge of sticks over a patch of toxic molds. Their hearts nearly stopped when a big yellow snake slithered under their feet.

 

     But through courage and perseverance, Alaine and Deanne finally reached the end of the forest path which opened up to a big sky—the most sky Alaine had ever seen, for she spent her entire life in the confines of the dark, swampy woods. The girls shielded their brows from the light as they looked towards the bay.

 

     It was a vast, open stretch of water with no trees in its center, so it must have been very deep. To Alaine’s surprise the water was not green nor brown, it was blue. She never knew water could be the color of bluebells. The shallower water lining the shore was darker, and as she looked closer she noticed bits of trash lodged in the muck.

 

     Metal cans and glass bottles, broken contraptions, rubber tires—these were not things that came from Laraine, but from Zareen Empire up north. To see them so far from their home was a surprise. The girls shared some whispers about the blue water and the bright sky, and when they stepped further out of the woods they saw yet another marvel.

 

     White, iridescent structures jutted up from the shore in the distance. They were like glimmering domes of abalone with long spikes along their rooftops. Almost like giant conch shells, Alaine thought, but what creature could have a shell so massive? As they cautiously approached this foreign village, they realized the structures were not actual shells, but constructed from some kind of cement.

 

     “Do you think this is it?” Deanne whispered.

Alaine couldn’t take her eyes off the place as she replied, “It has to be. Give me some of that salt, just in case.” Deanne opened the bag and Alaine stuffed two fistfuls of dragonsalt in her trouser pockets. Then she brushed her hands together as she led the way to the village.

 

     Now that they were closer, living figures had come into focus. Humanoid peoples with scaly fish-tails in place of legs, using their arms to drag themselves through the mud. Some had blue or magenta scales, but others’ were a deep red color, the very same as the ones Alaine found on the docks. And just as the dock worker said, they had a pointed shape.

 

     Though she had only seen them in picture books, Alaine had no doubt in her mind that these were sirenes. Their colorful, shimmery hair was worn long and free. Bone combs dangled from beaded ropes around every one of their necks and their bodies were adorned with jewelry of shells and pearls.

 

     More and more heads turned the girls’ way as they approached. Alien eyes with inky-black scleras, eyes with no pupils, watched the children with uncertainty. Some sirenes dragged themselves to the bay and retreated into the water. Others held their ground, silent and still.

 

     Alaine and Deanne shared a look at one another, then cautiously raised their right hands to wave. It was best to show that they meant no harm…At least not yet. Alaine’s gaze darted between every aquarian she saw, but it seemed there were only sirenes here, not a single mermaid to be found. Perhaps they had come to the wrong place.

 

     “Excuse me?” called Alaine. She stopped at the edge of the village, which was marked by heavy boulders surrounding the area. They were crusted with dead barnacles as if they’d been dredged up from deep waters. She had an audience of silent, wary sirenes, so the girl continued, “My name’s Alaine Fontaine. A dryad told me there were mermaids here. Am I in the right place?”

 

     “A dryad?” queried Deanne. Alaine simply hushed her while the sirenes looked at one another and shared murmurs. Their language did not sound like words to Alaine, just pops, whistles, and clicks. For a moment she feared they would not understand, until one of them—a female with a blue tail—called to her, “Are you friend or foe?”

 

     Alaine paused, shot a glance at Deanne. Deanne only shrugged, so Alaine reluctantly called back, “That depends! I need to talk to, um…Your leader or something!” Once again the sirenes conversed for a brief moment.

Then the blue-tailed sirene told her, “Wait there, behind the rocks!” before she dragged herself into one of the white domes. The others disappeared into different buildings, scrutinizing the girls the whole way.

 

     It was clear they felt threatened. But how could they, Alaine wondered, when their kind terrorized her village every time it rained? “They’re going to kill us,” whispered Deanne. “Forget it, let’s just go!”

“No way!” Alaine protested. Not after they’d come so far.

“This was a stupid idea!”

“We have dragonsalt, don’t we? We’ll be fine.”

 

     Shaking her head in dismay, Deanne pleaded, “Alaine, I have a _really_ bad feeling about this…”

Her friend turned to her, placed her hands on her hips and replied, “If you want to chicken out, then go! But I’m not leaving without a mermaid scale, no matter what.”

 

     Deanne let out a growl of frustration. For a long moment, she stewed in silence. “You are the biggest dummy in the world,” she finally said. “I hate you.”

“If you hate me, then go!”

“No!”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re all I have!” Deanne growled through her teeth, clutching the dragonsalt sack in a white-knuckled grip.

    

     Alaine was about to speak, but jumped with a start when someone shouted, “You two! Come around to the western gate!” It was another sirene, leaning over the top of the boulders. Alaine glanced towards the sun to get her bearings, then headed around the makeshift wall. Deanne followed closely in tow.

 

     They came to an opening in the wall, boulders stacked in a curving arch all wrapped with dead duckweed. They realized the rocks were acting as a mud-retention wall, the village sunken about a foot lower than the land around it. Likewise, it was submerged in a foot of water flooding in from the bay.

 

     Another female sirene was on the other side, sitting upright on her knees—or where her knees would be if her tail was but a costume. But she was no fake, this was a true sirene with deep blue hair that shimmered like oil. It dangled loose and free down to her naval, her torso draped in a garment made of thousands of bone-beaded strings. Below was her striped tail of blue and black, the end flaring into a delicate veil of fins.

 

     Her chestnut skin was taut, her face was smooth, and though she appeared youthful, every sirene died of old age looking young. Her commanding presence and the crown of pointed shells around her head told the girls she was a voice of authority here. And when she said “approach me”, they did not think twice before they found themselves stepping down into the water to stand before her.

 

     “You speak with Issumi, ambassador of the Aquarian Alliance,” she told them. “State your names and your business in Alliance territory.” Her hands were folded before her like a dignitary, though her eyes were hardened like those of a warrior.

 

     Alaine was struggling to hold her nerve. She took a deep breath, tried to conceal her fear as she stood tall and replied, “I’m Alaine Fontaine and, um, this is my best friend, Deanne Dupont. We heard there were mermaids around here, but...Well, if not, can you tell us where they are?”

 

     Issumi did not have eyebrows, but the space where they might be twitched ever so slightly. “Perhaps I can, or maybe not,” she replied. “Tell me what business you have with mermaids first.”

 

     This was getting tricky. The situation could collapse any moment and Alaine’s knees were beginning to quiver. The knife felt weightless in the waistband of her pants, so flimsy and useless in the presence of a real, live aquarian. She’d seen one in person only once before this, when she and her father netted a bloated cecaelia corpse from the bottom of the lake. What an awful day that was.

 

     Other than that, Alaine only knew aquarians from the books her mother read to her, for the rainy nights they haunted, she was shut away indoors and hypnotized by their spell. Should she mention the haunts to Issumi? Should she tell her about her father? Options raced through Alaine’s head. She thought back to those old storybooks.

 

     Then she realized she had an advantage here. Sirenes were fae—magic users—and fae could not tell untruths. Alaine was only commoner and though she could not wield magic, she could lie and lie and lie until she was blue in the face.

 

     So that’s exactly what she did when she responded, “Um, we’re from the village of Yong and we got a little far from home while we were looking for toads. It’s too scary to go back alone, there’s snakes and peatcreeps everywhere! We heard mermaids can walk on the land like us, so we thought one of them could walk us back to our village.”

 

     Issumi’s silence was heavy, heavier than the sack of dragonsalt weighing down on Deanne’s shoulder. Her slanted eyes narrowed, scrutinizing them carefully for a long moment. The girls were wet and smeared with mud, appeared nervous and frightened…

 

     Their story must have seemed plausible enough, because the ambassador swept her arm towards the village and told them, “You poor things. Make yourselves at home then, and I will contact someone who can help.” She raised her index finger and added, “Just know that the Alliance is seldom so courteous to terrians— _especially_ commoners—so do not make a nuisance of yourselves.”

 

     With that, Issumi wriggled her tail and bolted off across the shallow water, disappearing into the bay. For the way Alaine’s hands trembled, Deanne’s trembled twice as hard. Alaine grasped her friend’s arm and led her further into the village. The buildings did not seem as large up close and none of them had doors or covers on their rounded windows. The only “furniture” to be seen were boulders supposedly for sitting.

 

     Examining the “cement” closer revealed tiny bits of shells embedded in its rough surface. It was made of pebbles and ground clamshells, abalone, mussels, and perhaps sand. Nervous sirenes peered at the strangers from indoors, but once they saw Alaine and Deanne walking freely around their village, their fear began to wane. If Issumi approved, then perhaps there was nothing to fear.

 

     Slowly they crept out of their shelters as the girls approached a curiously unique structure. It was a round pool made of the same glittery white cement, with a ceiling above supported by a ring of pillars. Otherwise it was open to the air. It was raised high on a layered stair-like platform. Several sirenes were sitting along the edges, some holding babies at their breasts and young children in their scaly laps.

 

     Eager to get their feet out of the cold water, Alaine and Deanne climbed the platform. It was muddy and slick, but worth the struggle when they got a peek over the edge of the pool. Alaine jumped when Deanne squealed in her ear, “Oh my gosh, look at all the little babies!”

 

     Indeed there were at least a dozen sirene infants splashing about in this shallow pool. It was  meticulously decorated with rocks, plants, shells, even fish and crabs to simulate a natural environment. Alaine once kept a pet fish in a jar, but this was far, far beyond that.

 

     The baby sirenes babbled as they flapped their tails and drifted aimlessly through the water. Near the back of the pool, one had gotten a hold of a crab and was sucking on its shell. Alaine’s stomach flipped, but the adults didn’t seem alarmed even after the baby got a pinch on the nose and began to cry.

 

     “Hey! Excuse me, that one’s hurt! Aren’t you going to do something?” she called to them, pointing at the wailing infant. The sirene parents regarded her with frowns of contempt.

A large female with long green curls told her, “How like your kind to impose yourselves on us, Commoner. That is _my_ shimmerling, and the way I raise him is none of your business!”

 

     “But…” Alaine’s shoulders sank. “He’s crying!”

The mother waved a dismissive hand. “And with his tears come a valuable lesson. He will need it when he faces the sea and all the dangers in it. Dangers much greater than a simple crab.”

 

     “Like fishing nets,” the male beside her added, glaring daggers at Alaine.

“And whales,” said another.

“And Zareen battleships.”

“And sewage clouds—”

 

     “Wait,” Alaine interrupted, “Zareen Empire? Have you ever been there?” Suddenly melodic laughter rang from the sirenes like chiming bells.

The girl looked on with befuddlement until the shimmerling’s mother explained, “Please! As if we could stand their putrid waters for even a moment!”

“As if they wouldn’t welcome us with swords to our necks…” another grumbled.

 

     Deanne took a seat on the edge of the pool, finally dropping the heavy bag of salt by her feet. She rotated her sore shoulder as she asked, “Why’s that?”

“Oh, they think us lower than the filth they pump into our gills,” said the mother sirene, her pink lips curved into a scowl. “We joined the Aquarian Alliance because the Sovereign promised change.”

 

     She swept her arm towards the pool and continued, “Our poor shimmerlings cannot even splash in their native waters, the shores are so contaminated with Zareenite pollution. And do you think the Empire cares? Absolutely not! They will continue to poison our people as long as their pockets burst with gold.”

 

     The girls turned back to the shimmerlings, swimming around in their artificial ocean. The water was clearer than that in the village as if it had come from a different source. The wailing baby was wailing no more. He was now quite content playing with a stick, the tiny puncture on his nose already forgotten.

 

     Alaine sat beside Deanne in silence, thinking hard about what she’d been told. All that trash she and Sebastian pulled from the lake, all that sewage that flowed through Laraine from Zareen Empire…Every time it rained, all that filth must have washed down here to the bay.

 

     She was never allowed to go swimming in the swamp. In summer when rain was scarce, it smelled so bad she would nearly retch. Villagers wouldn’t leave their homes without cloth tied around their noses. To imagine these helpless babies swimming in that toxic mess left her horrified.

 

     “Um, so,” Alaine began cautiously. “what’s being done about the pollution?”

She regretted the question when a deep sadness contorted the sirene mother’s face. She let out a long sigh and hung her shaking head low.

“Not enough. Still our people grow sicker and sicker. Too often our children are sick right out of the womb. So many never even live to see the ocean!”

 

     The mother dropped her face into her palms. The two sirenes beside her offered their comfort, stroking her scaly back. One of them turned to the girls and added sharply, “The Sovereign is ordering strikes against Zareenite factories along the coast, and he has my full support in that. These factories, they flush poison through their pipes…And all pipes lead to the sea, you know.”

 

     He raised his left arm, and to the girls’ surprise it ended in a gnarled stump. “The Empire knows this, but they’re cold and uncaring to us. Years ago I was caught in a Zareenite fishing net, and those churlish sailors were more concerned about their property than my life. They cut me free alright, but gods forbid they damage that net!”

 

     Alaine glanced back at Deanne, whose hands were clamped over her mouth in shock. Her round-eyed gaze was stuck on the sirene’s arm—or lack thereof.

 

     “I don’t know where you two are from,” he continued, “but should you find yourselves at war with the Alliance, know that our kind only fights to save what your kind has soiled. Tell that to your people, will you? Perhaps they’ll have time to clean up their act before our Sovereign does it the hard way.”

 

*

 

     Deanne pulled Alaine aside, ushered her behind a dome to whisper her concerns. “I don’t think these aquarians are the ones attacking Laraine,” she said. “I think these are just…Moms and dads. Villagers, not soldiers.”

Alaine nodded and replied, “I think so too, and I don’t wanna hurt them. But if they can get a mermaid to come with us, we’ll throw salt in her face and knock her down. I’ll cut off her scales and then we have to run real fast—”

 

     Deanne shook her head. “But what if she hasn’t done anything? What if she’s just a villager like them?”

“I don’t care.”

“Alaine!” Deanne exclaimed through her teeth, giving her friend a shove. “Didn’t you hear a word they said? They’re in enough pain already. I think we should change our plans.”

 

     Alaine’s eyes rolled up as she crossed her arms over her chest. She shifted her weight to her other leg and sighed, “Fine. Since you’re so smart and all, what do _you_ think we should do? I’m still not leaving without scales.”

“I think we should _ask_ for them,” suggested Deanne. “Maybe we can trade something.”

 

     “They’re going to get suspicious if we ask, and then they won’t let their guard down,” Alaine argued. “It’ll ruin everything!”

“I don’t want to hurt anyone, Alaine!”

“Then don’t! I’ll do it myself!”

“You _can’t_ , Dummy, you’ll get killed! Why don’t you see that?”

 

     The two quietly bickered behind the dome until they heard a trumpeting sound nearby. Peeking around the building, they saw Issumi kneeling in the distance with some kind of shell at her lips. She then lowered it and shouted, “Calling Alaine Fontaine and Deanne Dupont! Report to the central plaza!”

 

     The girls shared a quick glance at eachother, eyes wide and anxious. Alaine took Deanne’s trembling hand and started leading her to the plaza. Deanne squeezed it so tightly the Fontaine girl feared her fingers would break. The sack of dragonsalt was heavy on Deanne’s aching shoulder, but she dared not let it out her grip as they approached the ambassador.

 

     “You will meet with Lady Brackish, keeper of the mermaids,” Issumi told them. “She is a grand officer in the Alliance military, so I suggest you mind yourselves in her presence. I consider myself a peaceful diplomat and I may take pity on you, but Brackish is…”

 

     She paused, briefly rolling her shoulder. “…Of a different sort. I cannot guarantee your safety from this point forward. If you wish to leave, you have approximately two minutes before her arrival. You have been warned.” With that said, Issumi wriggled off back into the bay.

 

     Looking all around, the girls saw sirene parents crawling into the nursery pool with their shimmerlings, ducking below the edge and out of sight. Other villagers were making their way indoors until Alaine and Deanne were the only ones standing there out in the open.

 

     That bad feeling Deanne mentioned? Alaine was feeling it now, she was certain. Her blood felt heavy and her stomach was tied in knots. She swallowed the fear creeping up her throat and tightened her grip on Deanne’s hand, who stood frozen right beside her. They saw something rising from the bay ahead.

 

     It was a pole with a tattered blue and cyan banner on it, depicting a sirene-shaped figure with a sword in its hand. It was being carried by a cecaelia, who marched onto shore and came to an immediate stop.

 

     The gruesome memory of the cecaelia corpse flashed in Alaine’s mind, and she remembered that it did not have legs as this one did. The corpse had been that of a “drifting” cecaelia, her father told her, and he said there were also “walking” cecaelia who had legs.

 

     These legs were surrounded by his tentacles which hung from his waist like a wriggling skirt. Smaller tentacles dangled from his head and face, framing alien eyes much like the sirenes’. He must have towered over eight feet tall, all clad in armor made from scales, bone, and chitin. Though his skin was green and rubbery, he was otherwise quite humanoid in his structure.

 

     Alaine assumed this fearsome cecaelia had to be Brackish. That is, until he barked an order in a foreign language and then more aquarians emerged from the bay behind him in two straight lines. Sirenes dragged themselves onto shore with their arms—but no, they were not sirenes.

 

     Their skin and scales were green in color with solid black eyes. And as they got closer, Alaine could see their scales were larger, more round in shape than the sirenes’ just like the dock worker said. Like the cecaelia they were armored, though their tails were left exposed by short skirts.

 

     For when they rose to their knees and shook the water from their hair, a white light consumed them and they began to change forms. Their tails split in twain and took the shape of scaly, green legs with webbed toes at the end. These feet exactly matched the footprints that stained Laraine’s walkways after a haunt. In these terrestrial forms their skin had changed from green to various shades of brown, but every one of them had ocean-blue hair tied up in a bun atop their heads.

 

     Six mermaids now stood on either side of the cecaelia in two lines, pointing their long spears towards the sky. Simultaneously each line turned on their heels to face the other, and one more creature emerged from the water between them. The cecaelia shouted out something else the girls couldn’t understand. Then he stepped aside and stooped over in a bow.

 

     He bowed not to Alaine and Deanne, but to the monstrous, hulking thing slopping through the shallow water towards them. It must have weighed a thousand pounds or more, something that looked like a sirene crossed with an alligator, and then crossed again with the lake monster from Alaine’s nightmares.

 

     It had two burly arms tipped with five clawed, webbed fingers. Its skin was dark, putrid-green with two yellow eyes. Its scowling mouth was bursting with long, jagged teeth that extended out from its underbite. Like the sirenes it had a tail in place of legs, but this tail was fat like a slug and covered with layers of striped fins all in toxic shades of green and yellow.

 

     Bald was its head except for the fins on the sides of its face, which shot a full foot outwards when it spotted Alaine and Deanne. Immediately they could tell it wasn’t pleased, and in Alaine’s gut she knew that this thing was no “it”. It was not a beast nor monster. _She_ was Lady Brackish, the undine keeper of the mermaids.

 

     Brackish gurgled with every heaving breath as she dragged herself closer to the trembling girls. Alaine felt Deanne tug at her hand as if to say “run”, but determination kept her planted right there in the shallow, murky water of the plaza. The keys to her father’s fate were standing just a few feet ahead. So close, yet so far away.

 

     “Brackish speaks. You will listen,” growled the undine. Her low, gurgling voice was the furthest thing from “feminine” Alaine had ever heard. In fact there was nothing about this creature that suggested she was female at all. But according her mother, undines were once beautiful hydriads, nymphs that watched over the waters. Sometimes they became corrupted by magic and hatred, turning them into the monstrosity in front of her.

 

     Watery saliva oozed from Brackish’s mouth as she continued, “I speak, I fight, I die on behalf of Gaia’s waters. Waters which are being ruined by your very kind. You cause my Mother much pain, and when her tears fall is when I strike your villages with my song. So, little pests, you may speak. Convince me why I should not sing to you and make you my thralls.”

 

     Muddy water had soaked Alaine’s clothes all the way through in this journey. Probably a blessing, because she was sure fear had squeezed her bladder dry just a moment ago. Now here she stood before her greatest enemy, the bane of her people and the boogeyman of her nightmares, armed with nothing but a kitchen knife, a pocketful of salt, and her anxious best friend.

 

     She turned to Deanne, but Deanne just met her with bulging eyes and a helpless shake of her head. It seemed fear had emptied every thought in her brain the way it emptied Alaine’s bladder, and with the smarter of them down it was up to Alaine’s intelligent decision-making to get them through this alive.

 

     They were doomed, she thought. Until her mother’s voice suddenly called to her in her time of need. Rene told her: “ _Allie-girl, why don’t you sing a pretty song for the nymphs?”_

 

     Alaine’s gaze flashed back up to Brackish. Monstrous and corrupted or not, she was still a nymph, and there was no quicker way to a nymph’s heart than music. The girl closed her eyes, steadied her quaking breath. Her pain was great but her father’s was greater. His life relied on the beauty of her voice, so finally she parted her cage of teeth and set it free.

 

     _“I am Alaine Fontaine of Laraine,_

_And you must let me explain,_

_Please understand, though I come from the land,_

_I bring peace from my domain,_

_I am Alaine Fontaine of Laraine,_

_Though my greatest fears are arcane,_

_I need mermaid scales to cure daddy’s ails,_

_Else my family’s torn in twain,_

_I am Alaine Fontaine of Laraine,_

_And I have no more to gain,_

_From staying at home, by myself all alone,_

_For I failed my parents again!”_

 

     In the last line her voice gave way to grief. It cracked like fine pottery, tears spilling down from her eyes. She felt Deanne’s fingers curl around her own and together, they stood their ground before the undine’s judgment. Brackish looked down on them with no change in her scowl.

 

     After a moment of consideration, the undine said, “You speak the language of my kind, and you speak it fluently. Your song works in your favor, but do not think that alone is enough to spare you. Lies flow like water from the mouths of commoners. Prove your diplomacy to the Aquarian Alliance and I will give you the scales you seek.”

 

     Alaine furrowed her brow. “How can I do that?” she asked. The undine shifted her great weight to one of her arms, pointing her black clawed finger directly at Deanne.

“Through sacrifice,” rumbled Brackish. “Donate this one to our ranks. She will fight for the Alliance and you will walk free to send our message of change to your people.”

 

     Alaine heard a gasp from Deanne as she shrank behind her. “Don’t, please!” the Dupont girl whimpered.

Alaine raised an eyebrow at the undine and replied, “I won’t do that. She’s my best friend! Can’t I prove it another way?”

“That is my demand. You will honor it or you will join her.”

 

     Her own heartbeat was thundering in Alaine’s ears. Rage burned in her belly and she stamped her foot in the water, splashing mud all around as she cried, “You’re an ugly, _evil_ creature! You’ve given me nightmares my whole life and you steal kids from my village! How can you possibly think you’re the good guys?”

 

     The undine wrinkled her flat nose, the creases of her scowl sinking deeper. “And you are killing my Mother!” she snarled, then she raised her massive hand high and slapped it down into the water. A ring of mud shot out and soaked the children head to toe.

 

     She went on, “I was once three hydriads, but we sacrificed our lives to become this—this _abomination_ —to protect her! I care not for your pathetic father. He and his kind are the reason we suffer, and you have the gall to suggest we are the evil ones? Thoughtless, stupid girl! You will know your place!”

 

     At the speed of a shriek, Alaine found herself in the undine’s grasp. One giant clawed hand pinned her arms to her sides and she could not reach for her pockets, much less her knife. Just as Brackish lowered her jaw to sing, a cloud of red dust exploded against her face.

 

     Alaine fell back on her feet and staggered against Deanne, who was reaching for another fistful of dragonsalt from her bag. Brackish reeled back with a roaring screech, frantically splashing her face with muddy water as all six mermaids rushed forth. Deanne and Alaine threw more salt in great red arcs, plumes of vibrant dust rising into the sky.

 

     The sharp, spicy scent that filled the air was quite pleasant to the girls, but it seemed to be as fire to the aquarians. The mermaids stopped in their tracks and threw their hands to their burning faces. Wails of agony rang across the village, sirenes looking on in fear from their shelters.

 

     Alaine wasted no time getting what she came for. She tackled the nearest mermaid and they both went splashing down. The blade of her kitchen knife plunged sloppily into the mermaid’s kicking, scaly leg. Alaine flew back when a foot crashed against her face, but not before she'd dislodged a handful of bloody scales.

 

     The knife was dropped somewhere in the muck and forgotten. Alaine ripped the loose scales from the mermaid and shoved them in her pocket as she scrambled back to Deanne. The Dupont girl was trying to run away while pelting the cecaelian flag-bearer with salt.

 

     It never made contact with him, instead hitting some kind of shimmering barrier around him. He had casted a magical shield before stabbing the bottom of his flag into the mud. It stood in place, tall and imposing behind him as he rushed towards Deanne.

 

     The dragonsalt bag fell into the water, blooming out in a blood-red cloud. The Dupont girl tried to run, and though the cecaelia was very slow and clumsy on his legs, his tentacles were quick and agile. One extended out and seized her by the wrist, another catching her leg. He dragged her into his arms and pinned her against his armored chest as she let out piercing screams.

 

     Alaine’s gaze darted to Brackish and her mermaids. They were starting to recover after rinsing the salt from their eyes, stumbling towards her in half-blindness. She had the scales, she realized, and she was more than quick enough to get away from these people. They couldn’t stray too far from the water and it was not raining, so she doubted they would follow her far.

 

     She could run home and save her father. But what was the point, she thought, if she lost her best friend? Alaine decided she was losing _no one_ today. She bolted towards the cecaelian soldier with a furious howl, armed with nothing but her fists and teeth. His arms were occupied with Deanne, but he still had six tentacles to spare and used half of them to slap Alaine down.

 

     The girl spun through the air before landing face-first in the muck. Her bluebell crown landed several feet away, floating atop the rippling water in pieces. By the time she rose to her feet, six mermaids had descended upon her. She fought their iron grips to no avail as they pinned her on her knees.

 

     Ahead, Brackish was furiously clawing her way through the mud towards her, wriggling her heavy tail like an overfed snake. Alaine’s vision suddenly became blurry and dark. The screams and shouts around her simply drifted into white noise.

 

     All became lost but a lovely song, the loveliest and most entrancing melody to ever touch her heart.

 


	2. Shapeless Ocean

##  **[CHAPTER 2: SHAPELESS OCEAN]**

 

     On rainy nights in Laraine, Alaine was plagued by nightmares. They were always as brief as they were vivid. Dreams of cold water lapping at her feet, then her knees, rising higher and higher over her head. Dreams of a hulking shadow ensnaring and consuming her as a serene melody rang in the distance. Dreams of darkness, of loss and confusion.

 

     Then she would wake, always standing before the front door of her house. Groggy and disoriented, she would stumble back to bed and fall into a more peaceful dreamland until morning. That is how it had always been.

 

     But this time, Alaine never saw that next morning. It was lost to the sea and time along with the weeks, the months, and the years after it. It was the longest nightmare of her life. It seemed to fade in and out from nothingness. Only fragments stood out to her, faint flashes of things she couldn’t be sure really existed.

 

     She recalled thrashing below unforgiving waves, watching her webbed fingers claw towards the sun dancing high, high above. She recalled fistfuls of black hair coming loose from her head and the smooth curve of her skull. She tried to kick but her legs were stuck together, perhaps tied?

 

     Ugly green horses with scaly fish tails. She rode one, she thinks, and it bit her. She held a long pole in her hands and hit someone with it. She didn’t want to and she felt bad. Why did she do it?

 

     Cold. It was always cold but she never froze. Sometimes even her blood felt cold. Sometimes she was drifting, sometimes walking. Sometimes the air was heavy and oppressive and other times it was light and free. She would do so many things she didn’t remember for reasons she didn’t remember.

 

     Much time passed and passed and passed, but eventually her morning came. Alaine awoke on her back, the surface below her wet and slimy. Mud. She was lying in the mud, but the forest canopy did not greet her above. Instead she saw a vast, sickly-yellow sky choked with brown smog.

 

     The girl shot up with a gasp and a sharp pain rocketed through her skull. It sent her collapsing back down, gnashing her teeth to cope. A mouth spoke to her, but it only spoke in pops, whistles, and clicks.

“ _Be still, Sister. You’ve been wounded. Turn your face to me and speak your name_.”

 

     To her ear the language was nonsense, but her brain understood it perfectly. Alaine groaned, turning her aching head until she saw another face looming over her. It was wrinkled and scarred, long blue-white hair pulled into a topknot. Brown-skinned and almost human except for the green scales on her cheeks.

 

     Scales! Round, green scales! Alaine found her hand reaching up to the old woman-creature’s face as if to claw those scales off her, but her wrist was seized before she ever made contact. The person’s reflexes were fast and her grip was strong, unlike Alaine who felt dizzy and weak.

 

     “ _Sister! Speak your name!_ ” ordered the scale-faced old lady. Alaine blinked several times and the blur was fading.

She opened her mouth and words fell out in a different language. “Dorikori Jun,” she said. She didn’t know why she said it or what it meant.

 

     The face before her gave her an odd look, then turned away and said to someone else, “ _This one’s alive, but her thralldom is slipping._ ”

“ _How so?_ ” queried another voice, from someone Alaine—or perhaps she was Jun—couldn’t see.

The woman replied, “ _She’s speaking Universa. Look at her helmet, it’s cracked like an egg_!”

 

     “ _Must have taken a dworfen hammer to the head. She’s still quite young, she’ll bounce back_ ,” said the second voice. “ _Sooner we get these Sisters off the field and back to their Officers, the better. Round up any live ones and contact_ …”

 

     The voice was drifting away like an unmanned rowboat, its leaky hull filling with water until it sank. Down and down into the deep, dark, murk. Here it was quiet and Jun could sleep in peace.

 

*

 

     The next time she woke, Jun was swimming swiftly as a bird flies. She cruised through an endless blue void with dozens of other people ahead and behind. They were travelling in a box formation, Jun somewhere to the middle. Within the box were mermaids in their aquarian forms, all green skin and scaly tails.

 

     Spears lie across their backs, fastened to their light chitin armor. Ahead of this formation were two armored sirenes riding on the backs of ugly green horses with fish tails—called _hippocampi_ , Jun recalled. But she did not recall much else, such as where they were going or where they came from.

 

     She was scared, but she knew she wasn’t allowed to show it. So she kept swimming in line with the others, kicking her tail up and down for miles and miles. Leading the whole formation was a hulking undine. Her fat tail slowly swayed side to side, bright yellow fins dancing hypnotically behind her like veils in the wind.

 

     Jun’s mind felt bleary. Every move she made seemed to be automatic, determined by her muscles rather than her brain. She did not question why because she knew she wasn’t allowed to. Silently she fell in line until lights appeared in the distance.

 

     Warm, round orbs of light cut through the dark void like—like what? Jun thought she knew. She closed her eyes tight as she tried to recall. A memory teased at her brain, flashing unclear images of a dark place with tiny yellow lights all around. Eyes. Yellow eyes! And a song, she remembered, made the eyes light up and the forest come to life.

 

     How could she have such a memory? Where was it, when was it? Jun thought maybe it wasn’t her memory at all, but someone else’s. Her mind was a swamp of murky, tainted thoughts. It was best not to think, just to listen. She listened to the pretty melody droning from the undine and then her troubling thoughts were at peace again.

 

     The battalion finally arrived at the glowing orbs. They were so much larger up close, transparent bubbles that held entire towns within. The bubbles were like shells to the leviathan creatures below them. These creatures were crab-like in structure, but rather than legs they had two long tentacles dangling from their chassis.

 

     They wrapped these tentacles around stony peaks jutting up from the dark void below, anchoring themselves to the tops like barnacles. They were appropriately named “globeholders”, Jun somehow knew, and seeing them filled her with equal parts comfort and dread.

 

     The formation approached the largest globeholder’s face. It was much like a crab’s face, hideous and alien with four black fleshy polyps that could have been eyes. It opened its mouth horizontally and Jun followed the others inside. The mouth closed tightly behind them and now they were packed in a dim chamber.

 

     The walls danced with bioluminescence, reflecting a rainbow of colors off the mermaids’ armor. They heard a loud, grotesque gurgling sound and the water around them began to drain. In less than a minute the chamber was dry. A sudden light blinded them from above as the fleshy wall gaped open.

 

     Humid air welcomed them from the other side of this organic doorway. The undine dragged herself up this ramp of bones as her mermaid followers burst into light behind her. Jun was blinded once more from the magical aura that surrounded her. She felt her body contort, skin tingling as if a million bugs crawled over her, tail splitting in twain.

 

     None of this was painful, however, and now she was looking down at two bare, webbed feet. She rose up with the other mermaids and they marched behind the undine, up into the bubble-city ahead. The ground was damp and grassy here as if the globeholder had been artificially filled with soil.

 

     Slick, smooth marble pathways meandered around buildings of white shellrock, dome-shaped like the ones floating somewhere in Jun’s addled memory. They passed strange leafy trees and marble statues depicting historical aquarian figures. Despite the deep, dark sea outside the globe, the light inside was bright and warm.

 

     This light was sourced from the fields of red bioluminescent grass and the golden leaves in the trees. Everything resembling a plant here seemed to glow. The undine dragged herself along the marble path with ease. There was no friction to scrape at her scales nor anyone else’s—like the many sirenes inhabiting this place.

 

     The undine led her battalion to the center of the city where the tallest building stood, the points on its roof nearly piercing the top of the globe. Its structure was like a pile of giant shells, with two white whale statues coming together in an arch before its grand entrance.

 

     Jun craned her neck to look at the statues as they passed under them, and then they were ushered through the blue double-doors by armored cecaelian guards. Inside was a palace with ceilings that stretched high with the winding staircases. It was a hall of white marble with deep blue motifs, the calm babbling of many fountains echoing off the stony walls.

 

     At the back of the hall was a throne. It was shaped like a giant open clamshell full of water, with a crowned cecaelia sitting inside it. He was a drifter and he did not have legs. But even if he did, Jun thought, she couldn’t imagine them holding his weight. He was massively obese, reclining with clawed fingers folded over his rotund belly. His tentacles draped to the floor like fat snakes.

 

     His fingers were adorned with jeweled rings and stringed baubles were tangled about his torso. Several cecaelian guards were posted around the hall, watching the undine and her troop of mermaids stop before their leader.

 

     Jun was feeling out of sorts at the moment, found it hard to think straight. But she noticed the other mermaids dropping to one knee before him, so she made herself do the same. They tipped their heads low as their undine mistress addressed him.

 

     In the language of pops and clicks she said, “My Sovereign, we return from the Redwood Islands victorious. Two Zareen trade ships and an oil tanker were sabotaged by the dorikori. We suffered minimal casualties, but the Zareenites will feel this loss for years to come. We hope this pleases you and the people of Aquaria.”

 

     Before the Sovereign could reply, every cecaelian guard in the room raised their spears high and let out a whooping cheer. The sound was like a rough croaking from the back of their throats, echoing off the walls all around. The Sovereign raised his right hand and the hall immediately fell into silence.

 

     Then the Sovereign said, “I will let their reaction speak for itself. You and your battalion have won a most glorious victory, Officer Gursel, and you will not go unrewarded. I would like to hold a celebration in your honor here in Tekee Mowe. A great feast to bring the villages together so that they may all witness the power of Aquaria…”

 

     His speech drifted away from Jun’s ear. With her head tipped low, only now did she really become aware of herself. Were her legs always so scaly? She didn’t recall her hips being so shapely or her chest being so bumpy either. Her hand strayed up to her face, grazing over the hard scales along her cheek.

 

     Those troublesome memories were teasing her again. They seemed so distant that she assumed they were dreams. Sometimes, though, these dreams held more than imagery. They had textures, smells, sounds and feelings. The longer she stared down at her scales, the more tangible her dreams became.

 

     Her scales were something very precious, Jun thought, though she did not recall why. She felt the universe pulling at her, beckoning her to a place she couldn’t even remember, wasn’t even sure it existed or if it had been a dream. The Sovereign’s speech was interrupted when she suddenly shot up to her feet with a loud gasp.

 

     The other mermaids glanced at her, but they did not rise. The cecaelian guards clutched their spears and took a step forward, ready to defend their leader. But Jun had threatened no one yet. She simply stood there, stiff as a board while her eyes darted all around like the panicked gaze of a caged animal.

 

     “Dorikori Jun,” snarled Gursel, “kneel before your Sovereign at once!” Jun heard these words, but she could hardly focus as a tidal wave of memories crashed against her head. Rickety bridges, a leaky rowboat, the stench of sewage, a dying man…

 

     She could see it, hear it, and smell it all. It raced by too quickly to comprehend, but in that moment she knew they had not been dreams. Jun looked at the alien faces around her. Horror struck her nerves as she realized that she was not supposed to be here, for these were not her people, this was not her home, and Jun was not her name.

 

     Gursel slapped her giant palm on the marble floor and bellowed, “This is your last warning! _Kneel_!” But the mermaid stood her ground.

Fear rounded her steel-blue eyes as she frantically cried in her native language of Universa, “I don’t belong here! I am Alaine Fontaine!”

 

     The Sovereign looked on with calm intrigue, but Gursel’s face hardened with rage. The undine rushed to her defective soldier and Alaine stumbled back out of her reach. “I’m from Laraine! I am Alaine Fontaine of Laraine! My—my father, I—please, I have to go home!” Alaine cried out, swiftly dodging another swipe from Gursel.

 

     The undine briefly turned to Sovereign. She bowed so low that her forehead touched the floor. “My deepest apologies, My Sovereign,” she said. Then she glared back at Alaine and continued, “This one has _always_ been difficult. I will spare her no mercy for disrespecting your court!”

 

     The Sovereign seemed unconcerned, however, as he waved his hand dismissively and replied, “Spare the rod instead, Officer. This one must have some spirit to break her thralldom.” His yellow eyes flicked to Alaine. He curled his clawed fingers at her. “Step closer, Dorikori.”

 

     Alaine had no idea where she was, but she knew she belonged in a swampy, smelly place from her dreams called Laraine. This was not that place. She knew not who this enormous cecaelia was either, though he seemed a person of authority and perhaps he could help her. She repeated helplessly as she approached him, “I am Alaine Fontaine of Laraine! I am Alaine Fontaine of Laraine!”

 

     “Hush now,” the cecaelian leader rumbled. He gently wrapped one of his tentacles around her wrist and pulled her up to the platform of his throne.

“Let me go home,” Alaine pleaded, her voice barely a croak in her grief. “I’m scared and I want to go home. I want my mommy and daddy…”

 

     Water sloshed from the cecaelia’s throne as he leaned forward, cupping the sides of her face in his hands. They were cold and clammy, reminded Alaine of someone else’s hands but she could not recall who. “Your Sovereign is a master of the arcane,” he told her. “So let us peer inside your soul, and we shall see this _home_ you speak of.”

 

     The mermaid could hardly protest before a jolt of electricity shot through her head. At least that’s how it felt as a blur of colored lights raced before her eyes, her body stiffening like a corpse before finally falling limp. The Sovereign’s grip was the only thing that kept her upright.

 

     She brought her hands up and pried at his fingers, wriggled in his grasp, but it felt as if all the strength had been sapped from her muscles. It could have been hours or perhaps just a few seconds before he finally let go and she stumbled away, lost her footing on the steps and tumbled down the platform.

 

     Her scaled helmet spared her skull when it bounced off the marble floor. Shaking the blur from her eyes, she looked back towards the Sovereign. In front of him now was some kind of painting—no, a projection of light—suspended in the air. A magical illusion, in motion like reality.

 

     It depicted a swampy forest through someone’s eyes, with treehouses in the canopy and rickety old bridges dipping between them. Alaine scrambled back to her feet and cried, “Laraine! That’s Laraine, that’s my home!”

“As I thought,” said the Sovereign. He squinted at the projection. After a moment he added, “I see nothing remarkable about this backwater shanty-town. So what makes _you_ so special, Dorikori? How have you broken your spell?”

 

     With a wave of his hand, the image dissipated like dust in the wind. Alaine reached for it helplessly. But it was gone forever just like the real thing, for the Sovereign then turned to his right-hand guard and ordered, “Send a battalion to the village of Laraine. I understand it’s one of our dorikori farms, so find out what trickery they’re up to and remind them of their place.”

 

     Alaine’s eyes bulged. She cried out, “No! Don’t hurt them, I won’t let you!” before rushing back to the Sovereign. She barely cleared two stairs before a cecaelian guard charged against her with his shoulder, sending her sliding half-way across the room. Alaine reached for the spear at her back, but two more guards had seized her.

 

     She kicked and flailed, screamed obscenities as they dragged her out of the palace. The Sovereign leaned back in his clamshell throne, folding his jeweled fingers over his belly. He addressed Gursel once more, calm and collected when he said, “Send her to Brackish for reconditioning. I don’t want her back on the field until her name is lost to the sea, lest my loathsome brother gets a hold of her...”

 

     The undine bowed low, pressed her forehead to the marble. “At once, My Sovereign.”

 

*

 

     Even if the whole rest of the world seemed foreign, Gryphon Bay would always feel like home to Jun. Of course she could never forget this place, for she was born, raised, and trained on its shores. She could remember being a spindly little mermaid with no hair atop her head, battling other bald-headed mermaids with practice spears until their hair grew in shimmery and ocean-blue.

 

     Jun was the toughest of them all, Officer Brackish would say, but not the smartest. “You don’t know when to quit,” the undine once told her. “You have always been a reckless fool, too spirited for your own good. But you fight well, so fight on.”

 

     Jun could run fast and swim even faster. She could speak multiple languages, ride a hippocampus, wield a spear and perform complex acrobatics by the time she graduated from mermaid to dorikori. Jun was a soldier. She served the Aquarian Alliance. The Alliance was her mother, her father, her home, and her life. There was nothing before the Alliance.

 

     When Jun was bigger and stronger, she was sent on missions. She always did what she was told, never asked questions and never disobeyed. Sometimes she went on missions in far off waters and sometimes she was assigned right here in Gryphon Bay, where all the bald little mermaids were trained to be dorikori. They all started here and that’s why it was Home.

 

     Brackish told them they must get new recruits from the villages in Kingsfall Swamp. But these villages were terrian and they could not reach them until the rains came, which flooded the land and allowed undine officers like Brackish to lead their soldiers.

 

     Today it had rained from sunrise to nightfall. The forest paths were raging with water, so now was the perfect time to strike Yong. Brackish led Jun and three other dorikori to the village after dark, when the villagers were either sleeping or too intoxicated to fight.

 

     Sometimes in their drunkenness, their fatigue, or their simple foolishness, they forgot to lock up their daughters. These girls would become Brackish’s next recruits, lured right to the undine by her entrancing song. Jun and the other dorikori would patrol the walkways and try to open doors for these children. Usually they were locked tight. But once in a while they could force one open and quietly snatch up a prize.

 

     They had to hit as many doors as possible as quickly as possible, for this swamp was a toxic, sickening place that Brackish couldn’t tolerate for long. The water was so putrid that it was nearly acidic, polluted with sewage, trash, and animal carcasses. By the end of the midnight hour, Brackish and her troop headed back to the bay with or without recruits.

 

     Tonight had yielded just one. Some foolish parent left their door unlocked—or perhaps they were not even home, for when Jun opened it a human girl no older than ten years stumbled out. Jun peeked in the doorway with her spear at the ready. Her steel-blue mermaid eyes allowed her to see in the dark, though she saw nothing but a sitting room littered with trash and empty glass bottles.

 

     The girl was half-way down the stairway of her treehouse and no adults had come chasing after her. _Fortunate_ , Jun thought, and snagged the girl in her arms before rushing back to Brackish. In the throes of a deep hypnosis, the child was limp in her arms.

 

     The undine was waiting in the swamp below and she could tolerate this foul water no more. She called her soldiers in for the night and they lined up around her. Jun was still carrying the girl, dressed in a simple night gown with her black hair loose at her shoulders.

 

     They heard shouting as the dorikori moved down the walkway to the water. All but Jun readied their spears and looked up to see a human male, sloppy-drunk and staggering about on a bridge above. “’Ey! Thas’ my daughter, you swamp-crawlin’ whoresch!” he slurred furiously over the rain.

 

     The man held an empty glass stein in his hand and flung it at the aquarians. His aim was so poor that they didn’t even flinch. It splashed harmlessly into the water while Jun watched one of her dorikori Sisters bolt back up the walkway. The man staggered back and bellowed, “Put ‘er down, god damn you! How dare you terrorize my family thisch way! Face me, cowardsch! Yeah, thas’ right, get up ‘ere and fight m—”

 

     At that moment the dorikori’s spear pierced through his belly. The man’s whole body stiffened with a loud croak. Not a second later she heaved him over the side of the bridge. The aquarians watched his flailing body sail down, his scream punctuated by a mighty splash.

 

     When he surfaced he was face-down and unmoving, the water around his corpse turning from brown to red. The dorikori too leaped over the side of the bridge and into the swamp, but she surfaced quite alive and with a fish’s tail. It was when the mermaids’ hair got wet that they transformed, so they wore wide-brimmed woven hats to shield them from the rain as they patrolled villages.

 

     Brackish congratulated her troop on a mission accomplished, then they returned Home with one more sister in their ranks. Sometimes Jun wondered what it was like to be human. This girl would soon transform into a mermaid, but as far as Jun knew, she herself had always been a mermaid.

 

     Brackish created Jun in Gryphon Bay. That’s what she was told, and fae could never lie.

 

*

 

     Almost every citizen of the Aquarian Alliance was aquarian. Aquarians relied on the health of the world’s waters to survive. When the terrians were rough with the water, the Alliance was rough with the terrians.

 

     But Jun soon learned that not all of her missions would be violent. Today, all she had to do was transport purified water to a nursery pool on Gryphon Bay’s shore. Perhaps easier said than done, for the water was suspended in a magical bubble and while resilient, it was not indestructible.

 

     If this bubble so much as scraped a jagged rock, the mission was failed. Jun and her fellow dorikori Noreeko travelled miles out to the sea to retrieve this bubble from a cecaelian witch. The witch was a centuries-old hermit who refused to leave her sunken ship, but she did agree to purify water for the Alliance in exchange for food.

 

     Jun and Noreeko had made this journey many times, yet each time was no less of a hassle. “We should get all the Sisters together and haul her stupid ship closer to the bay,” Noreeko grumbled in their clicking language called “Aquatica”. It carried further underwater than words, and right now she and Jun were three leagues under the sea.

 

     Jun carried a dead, stinking halibut that was half as long as herself. They took turns holding the miserable thing and were eager to exchange it for the bubble. Finally they arrived at the ruins of an old wooden ship, its rotting masts still reaching high for the surface. The whole thing was covered in a layer of slime, barnacles, and plantlife. It had likely been there as long as the sea witch was alive.

 

     The mermaids swam up to the cabin door. There was a damaged metal buoy hanging from the mast next to a metal plate. A contraption that likely wasn’t native to the ship, but put together by the witch. It made a loud, metallic sound when Noreeko bashed the ball against the plate, and just a moment later the cabin door swung open in a flurry of bubbles.

 

     “About time you showed up. I’m starving!” scolded the sea witch, snatching the halibut from Jun. She was a female cecaelia, orange in color with barnacles encrusted on her shoulders. Unlike the males of her kind she appeared “bald” with no tentacles upon her head.

 

     She briefly disappeared back into the cabin, then returned with a shimmering bubble in her arms. It held about a hundred gallons, lightweight underwater, but the mermaids knew it would be a different story once they got it on land. They took the magical thing together and Noreeko had one question for the witch before they left.

 

     “Hey Witch, why don’t you move closer to the bay? You’d get your meals faster, you know.”

And at this, the cecaelia scoffed, “Oh, sure! Poke my head out of the darkness, and every cecaelian male in the sea will come out of the woodwork to pester me. No thank you!”

 

     Jun tilted her head. “You think so? I mean, aren’t you a little…Old?” she asked delicately.

The witch furrowed her hairless brow as she replied, “ _Old_? I’ve hardly broken my fourth century. I’m in the prime of my life!” Her bright yellow eyes casted a glow upon her face. She was a drifting cecaelia without legs, sitting upon eight slithering tentacles.

 

     She gestured around herself with her arms. “Female cecaelia are rare, you see; especially ones as beautiful and magical as myself. The males of my kind tend to get…” She sighed, a stream of bubbles gusting from her mouth. “… _Possessive_ of us. I’d rather live alone on my own terms than locked up in some impotent slug-arm’s cave!”

 

     Noreeko blinked, glancing at Jun. After a pause she queried, “So, I take it you’re not moving any time soon?”

“Not a chance! Safe travels, Dears, and thanks for all the fish.” With that, the witch slithered back into her cabin and disappeared behind the door.

 

     Jun and Noreeko spent the next couple hours pushing the bubble back to Gryphon Bay. They dared not bring it too close to the rocks, but being out in the open water like this risked attention from unsavory critters. Jun had lost count of all the sharks and water dragons she’d slain in her life, some large enough to swallow her whole. She had the speed and grace to elude them, the strength to gouge out their eyes and slice open their bellies.

 

     They passed a number of turtles and countless fish, then a seal bounded towards them wanting to play. Noreeko had to rush ahead and intercept it before it charged right into their cargo. She tackled the beast and it spun her around like a top, arcing through the water.

 

     Noreeko pushed the seal away and shouted, “Ugh, not you again! You do this every time! Get out of here!” but it cared not. It zipped through the water in playful curves, butting the mermaids with its head each time it passed. Under usual circumstances they’d have killed it, but this one had a collar of beaded rope fastened around its neck.

 

     Who it belonged to was a mystery. But the owner was likely aquarian, likely an Alliance citizen, and slaughtering their own peoples’ beloved pets was a most heinous crime. There was a series of caves nearby that could very well have been cecaelian dwellings.

 

     They were getting close to the surface now. Noreeko clutched the seal by its collar as they ascended, and once they reached the muddy shore she picked up a rock and pitched it as far out into the bay as she could. The seal eagerly dived back into the water to retrieve it, but the mermaids knew it would never find it. This was all very routine.

 

     Together they rolled the heavy bubble onto shore. Once they shook the water from their waxy hair, their tails transformed into legs. That hardly helped them as their webbed feet slipped around in the mud, and just pushing the bubble twenty yards into the sirene village was an exhausting and tedious effort.

 

     Even worse was rolling the thing up the steps to the nursery pool. This was the most delicate part and they needed the help of a dozen or so local sirenes to pull it off properly. What they were _supposed_ to do was lift the bubble over the edge and set it in the center of the pool, then carefully poke a hole in the top to let the water dribble out like a fountain. This would ensure the pool was filled slowly and steadily.

 

     Instead, Jun’s feet slipped on the wet, stony steps and she tumbled down, taking three sirene assistants down with her. The others lost their grip and it dropped against the edge. The magical membrane exploded and a hundred gallons of water gushed violently into the pool like a tidal wave.

 

     Rocks, plants, fish, and baby sirenes went flowing over the sides. The shrieks of the shimmerlings’ parents rang out across the village and they rushed to catch their offspring before they hit the polluted water below. Jun threw herself against the stone to catch two of them, gnashing her teeth as she felt one of her ribs crack.

 

     Noreeko managed to snag another baby by their stubby tail. Looking around, it seemed all of the shimmerlings had lived to see another day. Once they were all safely back in their nursery, a sirene mother gave Jun a mighty slap across her face with her tail. She went rolling down the steps once more and face-planted into the muck.

 

     “You could have killed them all!” shouted an angry father.

Another chimed in, “My son is missing a scale!”

“What fools has the Alliance sent to us?”

“Clumsy idiots!”

 

     Noreeko slid down the platform and helped Jun to her feet. Never before had they botched a mission this spectacularly. They would feel Brackish’s wrath when they returned to base.

 

*

 

     The Aquarian Alliance had one simple manifesto: to keep their waters clean using any means necessary. When terrians poisoned the ocean, it affected every aquarian across the globe. Convincing aquarians worldwide to join the Alliance was not a difficult task, and so the Sovereign’s nation expanded like an aggressive infection over the centuries.

 

     Alliance bases were numerous and expansive, meaning Jun could be posted anywhere in the world at any time. Now she found herself in the Northern Sea between the continents of Noalen and Evik. It was one of the more polluted seas, for ships from many nations were constantly sailing every which way.

 

     Jun had seen the mighty wooden ships of Folkvar Kingdom with their giant red sails and distinct dragon heads jutting from their bows. She saw Evangeline Kingdom’s ships, modest steam-powered vessels of wood and steel. Then there were the long, sleek Matuzu Kingdom ships, marked by orange sails and powered by magic.

 

     But the Alliance’s only concern now was Zareen Empire, for the way Zareenite industries destroyed the ocean put the others to shame. Jun was just one head in a fifty-soldier troop as they stalked a Zareen trade ship. The vessel was a massive iron behemoth with cannons lined on all sides. It was stuffed with crates upon crates of goods that were soon to be lost, assuming Gursel and her battalion succeeded this mission.

 

     The dorikori made up the backbone of this troop, but they were not alone. Fighting alongside them was a handful of eckomaji, female sirenes armed with amplifier horns and song spells. Male sirenes were called machimaji and they specialized in hazard spells like heat and frost.

 

     Leading the troop were the oplopodi, few in number but powerful both physically and magically. They were walking cecaelian warriors armed with bone swords and shimmering magical shields—not to mention their tentacles. Now they were using these sticky tentacles to scale the side of the Zareen ship.

 

     It was passed midnight and dark clouds smothered the light of the moon. The sailors didn’t notice a thing as three towering cecaelian warriors boarded their vessel and tossed ropes over the side. They hid behind a maze of wooden shipping crates while the dorikori ascended the ropes.

 

     Gursel stayed in the water with the sirenes, keeping their distance until it was their time to strike with magic. If all went smoothly, they wouldn’t have to. The athletic dorikori transformed into their terrian forms half-way up the ropes, but they hardly paused their climbing. They needed to move quickly before patrolling sailors caught on.

 

     Most of the crew was likely asleep. The soldiers could see the silhouettes of human and dworfen workers meandering around on deck, holding cigarettes or brooms. There were no fae aboard this ship except for the cecaelian soldiers, for iron disrupted magic and made them ill.

 

     The stench of the iron was abrasive to the cecaelia, but they were far more insusceptible to it than the sirenes. Surely if the sirenes boarded this vessel, their magic powers would be useless and they would vomit all over the deck. Even the cecaelia were struggling to cast their shields however, so it seemed this would purely be a battle of strength.

 

     When all thirty-three dorikori were aboard, they looked to the oldest for commands. Her name was Kasmi, a mermaid in the late autumn of her life. The years had wrinkled her skin and washed most of the blue from her hair, but she was not one to be underestimated. Jun thought she recognized her from long ago, maybe fought alongside her in some minor skirmish.

 

     All aquarian eyes could see clearly in the dark, so Kasmi’s soldiers were able to read her silent hand signals while the ship’s crew were none the wiser. She directed them in groups of two and three, sending them sneaking off to different hiding points on the deck. The plan was to overwhelm the crew from as many sides as possible.

 

     Here was another mission where Jun found herself paired with Noreeko. Brackish once told them they had good “synergy”. Their commander signaled then. At once the dorikori swarmed out from behind barrels and crates while the crew fumbled in shock.

 

     Jun and Noreeko jumped a dworf smoking a cigarette near the railing. Though the dworf stood only as tall as their chests, he had the natural strength to lift them both over his head at once—and that’s exactly what he did. He flipped Noreeko onto her back and seized Jun’s spear before it could pierce through his heart.

 

     He wrenched the weapon to the side and Jun went with it. She spun in a semi-circle before slamming against the deck. She would let go of her spear for nothing. A third Sister rushed up from behind and slit the dworfen sailor’s throat with one clean swipe. She was bounding off to stab another sailor in the back before his body even hit the floor.

 

     Wrestling her spear from his dying grip, Jun followed her battle-partner to their next victim. They were not to get separated, Kasmi told them, because an isolated soldier was a dead soldier. Deckhands were scrambling around in a flurry of limbs and shouts, and it wasn’t long before the cabin door flew open and more sailors flooded out.

 

     A warning bell suddenly tolled from the crow’s nest. The sailors were armed with swords and gunpowder muskets, steel clanging and guns booming in retaliation. If the whole crew wasn’t awake before, they certainly were now. So much for stealth. One human sailor lined up his aim, pointing his musket at a slow-moving oplopodi.

 

     Jun acted quickly. With a running leap, she slid across the deck on her thigh and rammed into the back of the sailor’s knees. He flipped backwards onto his neck and the musket blasted a misfire into the air. Then Noreeko seized it before he could fire again, trying to pull it out of his grip.

 

     It gave Jun enough time to stab her spear through his neck. The musket was tossed overboard where a machimaji rushed to collect it. Such trash did not belong in the ocean. It would be disposed of with the ship later. An oplopodi picked up two sailors with its tentacles and tossed them overboard as well.

 

     The sirenes shredded these fallen men like piranhas the minute they splashed down. Gursel could not see what was happening on the ship above. It was when she heard Kasmi’s horn that she knew it was time to send aid.

 

     Blood washed over the deck like waves. The floorboards were slick with it and one of the oplopodi slipped. It was a fatal error, for the moment he turned his back to get up, a sailor blasted him in the back of the head with a musket. That’s when Kasmi made the call and the eckomaji responded. They gathered together and sang a wailing melody through their amplifiers.

 

     Their magical voices were piercing to the commoners, as if the sound was solid matter forcing its way through the ears. It constricted their brains like strangling hands. Every terrian on the ship was briefly staggered by this unbearable noise while aquarians moved in for the kill. The eckomaji had outed their location, however, and now the ship’s cannons were firing upon them.

 

     The sirenes split apart as a cannonball launched forth, but some were quicker than others. Two eckomaji were killed on impact, another too injured to sing. Gursel ducked below the dark surface and led her remaining sirenes to another location. The battle continued to rage on the deck above.

 

     Jun narrowly dodged a swinging sword, turned and parried another with her spear. Two mercenary guards were ganging up on her at once—so where was her partner? She thrusted the spear between a mercenary’s knees and jerked it to the side, flipping him onto his back.

 

     The second moved in to slice at her neck. She ducked backwards, bounding back up quick as a flash to drive her spear straight through his eye socket. He fell to the ground, then she finished them both off with clean, practiced punctures to their throats. Slipping over blood and meandering around corpses, Jun frantically searched for Noreeko as the battle quieted around her.

 

     The sailors and their mercenaries lie dead and dying on the deck, but the fight wasn’t over yet. There were still people manning the cannons in the lower decks. Kasmi clicked over the wind in _Aquatica_ , “Troop Three, comb for dead! Troops One and Two, follow me!”

 

     The veteran dorikori disappeared into the cabin with several soldiers in tow, including all of the remaining oplopodi. The oplopodi were strong enough on their own, Jun figured—they would make quick work of the stragglers while she and a handful of others scavenged for dead and wounded.

 

     She squeezed the last breaths from any commoners she caught in motion, though there weren’t many. It was a massacre. These drunken, overworked freight-throwers didn’t stand a chance against Gursel’s mighty battalion, for there was not a single waking moment of rest in a dorikori’s life. “Leisure” was a foreign concept meant only for civilians. A dorikori knew only missions and training, training and missions.

 

     One oplopodi lie dead, his head but a bloom of meat and skull fragments. A true shame, Jun thought, because he would have survived if he’d been shot anywhere else. As long as a cecaelia’s head was in-tact, a new body could grow from it, good as new.

 

     Jun counted four dead dorikori and one wounded with a broken arm. Kasmi soon returned from the cabin and announced through her horn, “All targets neutralized! We are victorious once again!” The remaining soldiers cheered among the deck of blood and corpses. Jun cheered as well, if only because it was expected of her. But she did not feel this victory in her soul.

 

     Noreeko lie unmoving with her right leg in shambles, blown apart by the blast of a musket. Death was an expectation in Jun’s life, something she was no stranger to. Sisters dropped around her left and right, day after day for years. So why did this affect her so?

 

     She wasn’t supposed to grieve. She wasn’t _permitted_ to grieve. Yet when she saw her Sister’s loose mermaid scales strewn across the deck among the gore, an overwhelming wave of sorrow washed over her and she did not know why. Jun kneeled and picked up a scale. It was green and rounded like her own, hard but flexible like thin chitin.

 

     For a long moment she simply held it in her palm and stared, furrowing her brow as if in deep concentration. Something in her mind, or perhaps in her heart, was surfacing. It was a memory struggling forth, as if fighting through quicksand. She could dwell on it no more, however, as Kasmi began barking more orders.

 

     The dead had to be laid to rest, or at the very least removed from this ship so the goods could be unloaded at base. Then the vessel itself would be taken to Slegelse Island and disposed of in the volcano.

 

     With their magical frost, the machimaji formed an icy slope up to the side of the ship. Every corpse was sent down to the water and then frozen in a glacier of enchanted ice, where they would be picked apart by seagulls as they drifted away. Kasmi commandeered the ship and steered it towards the coordinates of the Eastern Sea HQ.

 

     Gursel bellowed a victory song all the way back to base. Her dorikori followed her in a trance, and Jun’s troublesome memories were drowned out once again.

 


	3. Mari

##  **[CHAPTER 3: MARI]**

 

     The Eastern Sea was the most polluted sea on Looming Gaia. Many of the world’s nations treated it like a cesspit to flush away their industrial waste. It was out of sight, out of mind for them—though this filth certainly wasn’t out of the Alliance’s sight. In fact it was burning their eyes. Chemicals saturated its villages, flowed through the bodies of civilians, poisoned their children and destroyed their farms.

 

     Despite all the Alliance’s retaliation, thousands of trade ships still braved these waters every day in the pursuit of gold. But the Alliance wasn’t intercepting trade ships tonight. Instead they were hitting Zareen right at the source: their factories.

 

     Jun was fighting under Gursel’s command, though Gursel was not the only officer here. The Sovereign summoned undine officers from all over the world for this grand battle, and with them followed their troops of dorikori. Oplopodi had the legs, but only dorikori had the numbers to bring a fight to the terrians’ domain.

 

     The mission was high-risk, high-reward. If they were victorious, this would be a major victory for the aquarian peoples and the first step to expanding their territory from the water to the land. From there, claimed the Sovereign, only the sky was the limit. And perhaps one day they would conquer that too.

 

     Nearly a thousand soldiers waited beneath the waves on Evik’s western coast. There was a Zareen settlement here called Driza, and Driza boasted the Empire’s largest metal refinery. The water here was so toxic and sickening, the soldiers took shelter in mobile globeholders until it was time to strike.

 

     Even the globeholders were not fairing well in these filthy waters, so whether this battle was won or lost, it had to be done as swiftly as possible. The time to attack was drawing near. Final preparations were being made. Officer Gursel used her tried and true pairing method and with Noreeko dead and gone, Jun found herself in the company of a new face.

 

     …Or was it? This Sister introduced herself as “Dorikori Mari”, and while Jun did not recognize that name she swore she’d seen her face before. She and Mari looked like they could have come from the same womb. Jun was on her left as they stood in formation, waiting for the signal.

 

     Speaking unaddressed was forbidden. Jun knew that well and normally she was the picture of obedience. But Mari—something about her just called to Jun’s memory, her heart, her soul. She felt a panic rising in her gut. As if she didn’t pursuit this, something dreadful would happen.

 

     “Mari,” she whispered, the words spilling out like water through a sieve. “Have we met before?”

“No, Sister,” the other replied tersely, dismissively. So that was that. Yet the answer didn’t satisfy Jun, who stared so hard into her Sister’s face that she thought she may burn a hole through it.

 

     No. Jun did not believe that answer for a moment. For looking upon Mari gave her warm feelings of nostalgia, put imagery in her head of foreign places she’d never been. And if she’d never seen such places, how could she imagine them? It just didn’t make sense.

 

     There was no more time to dwell on such a thing. Now horns were blaring and the globeholders began ascending to the surface. They appeared as massive bubbles, but never did they pop as the creatures dragged themselves onto shore with their tentacles.

 

     Dorikori lined up in tight spirals, marched out of the globeholders’ mouths and onto land. A yellow sky loomed above and the air was thick with brown haze. Ahead was a stony beach littered with mounds of scrap metal, leaky drums of toxic waste, and giant rubber tires. The cawing of seagulls was a constant and these birds swarmed the beach like flies on a carcass.

 

     And a carcass it was, for this was a place barren of wildlife. Jun stepped onto a surface of loose gravel, When she examined it closer she realized this “gravel” was not stone, but broken bits of plastic and fish bones. She saw smoke of many colors billowing into the air, sourced from grimy black buildings all around.

 

     Driza’s factory district was more productive than ever. They seemed to be in a shipyard where boat parts were manufactured and assembled. The stench here burned the aquarians’ nostrils. Zareenite workers could be seen bustling about the docks further ashore.

 

     That bustling stopped the moment the globeholders surfaced. Laborers of many commoner species—human, dworfen, satyr, troll—stared in awe of the leviathans. When aquarian soldiers began pouring out, that awe turned to panic. Wailing sirens blared and red lights flashed all through the district as hundreds of dorikori and oplopodi marched onto the docks.

 

     Some of these soldiers carried gazebos on their shoulders, which held eckomaji and machimaji. They stayed near the back of the formation, which began splitting into smaller formations and spreading through the streets like an infection. Jun marched on alongside Mari.

 

     She began hearing screams over the raid sirens. The Driza City Guard was showing up full-force with their hammers, muskets, and armors of iron. Jun clutched her spear in a white-knuckled grip. Her instructions were to infiltrate the city’s power plant, but Zareenite forces were already starting to blockade the path.

 

     Panicked civilians ran for safety and by the Sovereign’s instruction, they were spared no mercy. From atop their gazebos, machimaji aimed their staffs and blasted them with bolts of ice. White beams shot out from the crystal tip of their staffs, leaving trails of frost in their wake.

 

     One struck a dworfen woman in the back of her head and down she toppled. Several people were frozen to the street. Others were completely encased in ice and became as statues, their corpses looking on while invaders terrorized their people.

 

     The battalion was picking up speed now as more Zareenite forces poured through the streets. The chaos was escalating, the screams, the boom of gunshots, and the crackling of hazard magic echoing off the enormous buildings of grey cement and grimy glass.

 

     The Zareenite Guard rolled through in great metal contraptions called “treadcannons”. Jun had seen the derelict remains of these things in the ocean, but never one in action. She recalled Brackish teaching her about them when she was a little grunt, said one shot from those cannons could rip a hundred people to pieces.

 

     And now there were three of them just ahead, clunky iron fortresses rolling along on treads. Two long cannons jutted out from either side. They almost reminded Jun of crabs, the cannons putting her in mind of their pincers. Chaos was breaking the battalion’s formation. The machimagi’s arcane beams just reflected off the Guard’s iron armor, their iron treadcannons, their iron everything.

 

     Magic would only take them so far in this battle. Now it was brute force versus the Zareenite’s technology. Sovereign expected as much and planned his strategy accordingly. That’s why Jun and the dorikori began sprinting ahead of the fray while the burly oplopodi occupied the enemy as long as possible.

 

     The oplopodi struck enemy soldiers with primitive swords of bone. These swords were shattering upon contact with their armor, but that did not discourage them. Most of the soldiers they faced were little dworfs that stood no taller than human children. Jun witnessed oplopodi lift these dworfs with their tentacles and violently swing them into the pavement, against walls and other soldiers, whatever they could to snap their necks and spines.

 

     The treadcannons were charged and ready to fire now just as the hundreds of dorikori flooded around them. The mermaids fought no one they didn’t have to, swiftly dodging around slow-moving Guards in their bulky armor. Their biggest priority was reaching the power plant before reinforcements arrived from other cities.

 

     Ahead, a crowd of civilians was being evacuated from a plaza. A stage was set with bright lights and colorful streamers. There had been some kind of festival, it seemed, but Sovereign’s forces were here to crash the jubilation.

 

     A mob of panicked Zareenites ran screaming through the streets as the dorikori advanced. Jun’s eyes bulged when she saw some of them mount small, two-wheeled metal contraptions and speed away by kicking the pedals. What were they called again?

 

     An ancient memory was trying to surface. Someone had shown Jun one of these contraptions before, but who? Certainly not Brackish. She remembered all of her lessons in Gryphon Bay, every second of her training clear as a globeholder’s globe.

 

     There was no time to think about it. Jun struggled to refocus. Here she was, invading an enemy city while mundane memories invaded her mind. Her fervor was suddenly waning. She had questions, and lots of them.

 

     The dorikori fanned out, remained in groups of two. Jun squeezed Mari’s hand, let go for nothing. The treadcannons fired with a series of deafening booms. A dramatic flare filled Jun’s vision and stars danced in her eyes after it passed, quick as a flash.

 

     She blinked it away, looked to her left.She saw nothing but meat and scales smeared on the pavement where a dozen of her Sisters once stood. Sweat beaded her brow. Her heart pounded like a dworfen warhammer and her lungs were stinging with every wretched breath she took.

 

     Another cannon fired. A fiery shell whizzed by and narrowly missed Jun and Mari, toppling them and turning their Sisters to red mist. There were still hundreds of dorikori to spare and their scaly legs kept moving them along without missing a beat.

 

     Jun frantically pulled Mari back to her feet and dragged her forth. She had never felt such panic in battle before. Not even the fear of death had ignited this kind of anxiety, but the fear of losing Mari seemed like the worst fate Jun could ever face. Losing Mari meant losing this warm feeling, this nostalgia and these faint memories that desperately clawed at her from their dark place in her heart.

 

     The power plant wasn’t far. It was the faded red building with all of Driza’s electrical lines converging at the tower jutting from its top. It was a building of many stories, geometric and practical in its structure. It was surrounded by rusty chain-link fences.

 

     These fences were no match for the dorikori, who scaled them with little more than a hop and a skip. Once the first few were over, they opened the gates from the inside and the rest poured through with the Zareenite Guard in hot pursuit.

 

     Every dorikori was armed with a small arcane explosive. They were to be detonated inside the plant, but some were desperately lobbing theirs at the Guard. These round, iridescent globes exploded in colorful flashes of light, beautiful as they were lethal. The sheer force of their detonations cast Guards onto their backs, blew out the rubber tires of vehicles and seared terrian skin.

 

     The treadcannons stopped firing two blocks ago, at least the direction of the power plant. Jun dared not look back, for she feared there would be nothing left of the oplopodi that stayed behind. All doors to the power plant were closing and locking tight. Sirens screeched while workers were on lockdown and the dorikori scrambled around the yard, trying to find a way inside.

 

     Now the aquarians were cornered as the Guard moved in. The dorikori held their ground in pairs of two and readied their spears. A volley of bolts fired from Zareenite crossbows, striking several dozen down. Among them were four gazebo-bearers and an eckomaji went tumbling to the dirt.

 

     Jun was unscathed, but she gasped in horror as a bolt struck Mari. It pierced through her leg and she collapsed to her knees. The downed eckomaji raised her amplifier to her lips and wailed an arcane melody. For a brief moment the Guards recoiled in agony and it was just enough time for the dorikori to rush them. The pairs were synchronized in their attacks, ensuring every foe was hit from two sides at once.

 

     Mari fought through the pain, rose back up and lunged forward, but Jun seized her arm and yanked her back. Mari’s head whipped towards her, eyes wide in befuddlement. “We need to get out of here!” panted Jun.

With a gnash of white teeth, Mari cried, “I die for the Alliance!”

 

     She tried to rush ahead with their Sisters once more. Jun tackled her to the ground not only to stop her, but to dodge the assault of crossbow bolts that flew passed. Dorikori and Zareenite Guards skirmished near the gate in a screaming, clanging, booming mob.

 

     Enemy reinforcements were arriving to the site. Hundreds of Zareenite soldiers seemed to emerge out of nowhere in their severe pewter-toned armor, rather than the rust-colored armor of the Driza Guard. Their big triangular shields were painted with the cyan and gold Zareen emblem. Where did they all come from, and how did they get to Driza so fast?

 

     Mari struggled to get away but Jun pinned her down, spittle flying from her mouth as she growled, “The Alliance doesn’t care about you, but I _do_!”

“Let me go, you traitor!” Mari screamed back. She wriggled her wrist free and took a swing, slugging Jun in the mouth. Jun rolled to the side and snagged Mari’s ankle just as she tried to rise, pulling her down once more.

 

     “Look around you!” Jun snarled. “We can’t win this! Follow me and we’ll both live!”

“You betray you own people, you coward!”

“You’re throwing your life away for a tyrant!”

“Let me go, I must fight!”

 

     The red sun reflected in Jun’s eyes as she raised her arm towards the sky. Then she brought it down and delivered harsh slap across Mari’s face. Suddenly she screamed in clear Universa, “You are the biggest dummy in the world, Deanne!” and in that instant, her Sister’s struggling ceased.

 

     Jun looked down at her, out of breath with crazed eyes. Her lips fell agape as if her own words had blindsided her. Her Sister looked back at her with the very same expression, then it faltered into something more thoughtful. Mari—Deanne?—furrowed her brow, eyes flicking this way and that in search of something within her.

 

     The chaos around them faded to white noise. Jun’s gaze shifted to the mob and things weren’t looking good for the aquarians. Beyond the gate, iron contraptions on burly rubber wheels were rolling up and dumping more Zareenite soldiers onto the scene.

 

     It was as if the Empire anticipated this attack, but that was impossible! The Sovereign had been so secretive about it, not even Jun knew she was going to war until the morning they shipped out.

 

     No one was willing to fire muskets this close to the power plant, but the giant longhammers these soldiers wielded were just as fearsome. The dorikori were quickly being overwhelmed and the oplopodi were nowhere to be seen. Jun watched as the last of the sirenes fell down from his gazebo and into a flurry of swinging hammers.

 

     “We have to go. _Now_ ,” she urged Deanne through clenched teeth. This time, Deanne did not resist nor comply. She simply lie there on the pavement. Stiff as a mummy, her gaze stared a thousand miles away. Jun realized something significant was trying to surface here.

 

     At the same time, she realized it would never be unearthed if they didn’t live to figure it out. They would figure it out together, far away from here, far away from the Alliance. She turned her back to her Sister and slung her arms around her neck, mindful of the bolts lodged in her flesh. Once she tucked her hands under Deanne’s knees, she was able to carry her like a backpack around the back of the power plant.

 

     The back gate was blockaded by Zareen forces and there was no way Deanne could climb the fence in her state. She was rapidly losing blood—losing it all over Jun’s back. Jun scrambled about in search of solutions, panic twisting her gut all the while. She wasn’t good at thinking for herself. She wasn’t good at thinking, period.

 

     It seemed hopeless. Then, a little voice muttered in her ear: “All pipes lead to the sea.” Jun glanced back at Deanne, then to her pointing finger. She was pointing to the giant pipes hanging out of the plant’s side, glistening with condensation. They were fit together in segments and ended in the ground.

 

     Jun let out a long, unsteady sigh. “I’m glad you’re here and you’re so smart,” she said. With that, she pulled the explosive little globe off her belt. From a good distance, she kissed the crystal bomb and it activated with a spark of color, then she lobbed it against the pipes.

 

     One bright flash and a tremendous boom later, Jun unshielded her eyes and saw the pipes in ruins. Murky water slopped down onto the pavement, the bottom sections blown wide open and gnarled. She peered down into the blackness. There was no telling what was down there, but it couldn’t be any worse than the mob of Zareenite Soldiers fighting their way around the perimeter.

 

     With Deanne on her back, Jun hoped for the best and crept inside the dark pipe. She shrieked as she found herself immediately slipping forward, the whole surface slick with reeking slime. Deanne came loose from her grip, flailing and screaming behind her. Their voices and the deafening rush of water echoed off the pipes.

 

     It was cold, it was wet, and it was pitch black in this nightmarish water ride. The mermaids flashed into their aquarian forms as they zipped through a long, winding maze of pipes. Down and around they went until they slammed into a thin metal grate. The grate was so rusty and ancient, it broke loose from its screws on contact.

 

     For a moment, Jun was caught in a daze. She found herself drifting through hazy, discolored waters that stung her eyes and gills. Bits of refuse and dead fish floated around her and she shuddered with revulsion. Finding Deanne wasn’t easy in this murk. But Jun persisted through the vile pollution, swimming through gallons and gallons of waste water pumping out from Driza.

 

     Finally she saw a flash of green scales struggling through the water. The bolt in Deanne’s leg was now lodged in her tail. Every undulation must have been agony. “Don’t worry, I’ve got you,” Jun assured her, then she tucked Deanne’s arm around her shoulder and quickly began pulling her from the horrid cloud.

 

     The water tasted foul and slimy and sour, but most notably it was salty. Jun could only assume they were in the sea and Aquarian forces were probably not far. They had to sneak away from them and all this. This battle, this war, and this wretched nation. After a long, silent moment of consideration, Deanne turned to Jun and asked, “Why?”

 

     “What do you mean 'why'?”

“All this effort to save me,” Deanne croaked in _Aquatica_ , “when I’m just going to bleed out anyway.”

Jun gave her arm a squeeze, replied manically, “Don’t say that! You’re gonna be fine! We’ll leave the ocean. They’ll think we died in Driza. Just hang on, please!”

 

     A crease appeared between Deanne’s thin blue brows. She queried once more, “But why?”

“Because,” Jun began cautiously, uncertainly, “I know you. I _know_ I do! I think…I think you’re my friend. And I think the Sovereign—he did something to me—and you—and the others that made us forget!”

 

     Jun’s black mermaid eyes were wide and fearful as she continued, “Just don’t die on me, or else we’ll never figure it out.”

 

*

 

     The red sun retreated below the horizon, and so too did Aquaria’s troops.

 

     They came close to victory—so very close—but in the end Driza’s power plant remained standing. The remaining dorikori realized the mission was bust. Infiltrating the plant was impossible as their Sisters fell around them and Zareen’s growing forces advanced.

 

     So these volatile Sisters detonated themselves instead. The explosions devastated the Driza Guard, but it just wasn’t enough to claim a victory. Undine officers wailed sad melodies of defeat through their amplifier horns and the few surviving dorikori were summoned back to them in a trance.

 

     Among those dorikori were Jun and Mari, enthralled by the mystic songs before they could escape Evik’s coast. _Those god damned undine_ , Jun thought, once she snapped out of her daze and found herself sitting in a globeholder prison. She was not alone here. One cecaelia, three sirenes, and Mari were locked in this bubble-creature with her.

 

     Jun still wasn’t sure what happened. By what little she could gather, someone had accused her and Mari of treason. And the longer Jun sat here in prison with her Sister, the more she suspected it was Mari herself. For this was not Deanne, the woman who had helped her escape Driza. This was Mari, the obedient thrall of Aquaria.

 

     There was no kind of enrichment in this globeholder. It was a small specimen that offered ten paces of space in any direction, and most of that space was occupied by the other prisoners. Jun didn’t know how long she’d been here, but she’d been lucid for one day and one night.

 

     The undine just couldn’t get a hold on her. Jun’s will was always slipping through their melodies. So what made her so special, she thought? Why was she always doubting her identity, meanwhile Mari remained convinced that she was birthed in Gryphon Bay? Jun was not, she knew that in her heart. Or perhaps Jun was, but not the girl Jun used to be.

 

     The girl whose name was lost to the sea.

 

     She belonged somewhere else and that somewhere was calling to her in a soft, familiar song. The melody was there but the lyrics were lost, drowning in the haze of her thralldom. What would become of them now, no one was certain.

 

     Jun asked Mari, “So why don’t you admit it? You ratted us out, didn’t you?”

“I serve the Aquarian Alliance,” droned Mari. She refused to say much since they arrived. Apparently she’d received some kind of medical attention, as the bolt was gone and plant fibers were wrapped over the wound. She and Jun sat side-by-side against the side of the globeholder’s rubbery bubble.

 

     A giant clamshell full of chum sat in the center. The other prisoners had bickered over it, and in the end the cecaelia pinned the three sirenes down with his tentacles before shoveling the food into his mouth. He wolfed it down by the handful until it was gone, but Jun wasn’t interested anyway. The whole situation made her sick to her stomach.

 

     She reminded her Sister, “You broke your thralldom back in Driza. I don’t remember how, but you did it just like me! You can do it again, Mari. Just snap out of it!”

Mari crossed her arms over her knees, stared stubbornly off into the dark Northern Sea. “I betrayed the Alliance,” she said. “I must be punished.”

 

     “But _why_ did you betray them? Think about it!” Jun urged. Mari turned her head as her expression hardened. She looked pained, conflicted. Jun continued slowly, “We’re _slaves_ to them, Mari. Not soldiers.”

“I _choose_ to fight for the Alliance!” Mari snapped back.

 

     Jun gave her a shove. “Do you?” she exclaimed. “Did you _choose_ to betray them too?” Mari opened her mouth to speak. After a moment she closed it and shook her head in contempt. Across from them, the hungry sirenes huddled together and glared daggers at the cecaelia as he licked his fingers.

 

     After a long pause, he suddenly spoke. “She’s right, you know,” he casually told Mari. Mari’s head whipped towards him, eyes wide under a furrowed brow. He continued, “The dorikori are thralls. Every last one of them, including yourselves. Some of them…” he tipped his head to Jun, “…Figure it out. But then, of course, they end up right here.”

 

     Jun’s jaw dropped. She scrambled closer to him and blurted, “You’re sure? Tell me everything you know!”

“That’s all, really.” He shrugged, eyes doleful. “I’m sure you were just a little one when they stole you away from your town, or ship, or—wherever you terrians are from.”

“You lie, traitor,” hissed Mari.

 

     A little grin spread across the cecaelia’s face. He was a well-muscled walker, deep blue of skin with black stripes. One of the stripes streaked across his eyes like a mask. He wore nothing but a sash of braided rope draped diagonally across his chest. A silver fishing hook was pierced through his nostril.

“Fae can’t lie, Sister. That’s more of a _human_ thing,” he said.

 

     Jun turned back to Mari and gasped, “Mari, it’s true! We were _humans_!” Then she whirled back around to the cecaelia. “How do you know all this?”

“Everyone knows. Me, them,” he nodded to the sirenes, “and all of Aquaria. But attempting to break a mermaid’s thralldom is an act of treason, so we’d do well to mind our own business.”

 

     With a shrug, he thumped his head back against the wall and droned on, “Hardly matters now, since we’re on our way to the floeback’s belly.”

“The what?” Jun quirked an eyebrow.

One of the sirenes chimed in, explained, “The sacred beast of the water divines! What an honor to meet such a fate!”

 

     The cecaelia rolled his eyes. “Ugh, religious wackos…” he mumbled.

“It’s true!” exclaimed another sirene. All three of them were clad in tops made of layered white shells. “Salina and Marina await us in the belly of the great floeback. Non-believers like you shall be turned to chum, and the rest of us will ascend to the stars!”

 

     Jun was starting to wonder how much of this madness was real and how much was just tricks of her hazy mind. She addressed the cecaelia, arguably the most lucid person in this bubble and asked, “What in the world are they talking about? Are we really going to be eaten?” Panic was beginning to creep into her voice.

 

     He waved a hand as if to swat a fly. “Ignore their ramblings. There’s a _cult_ here in the north that’s gotten a bit out of hand, if you ask me. I’m sure those three lunatics got arrested on _purpose_.” He paused, glancing at the sirenes chattering excitedly amongst eachother.

 

     Then he went on with a sigh, “But yes, we’ll be fed to the floeback whenever it happens to drift by. Shouldn’t be long. Old girl circles this settlement every couple days. Does a fine job of keeping ships away, so the Sovereign feeds her a steady diet of miscreants to keep her around…”

 

     Jun felt her stomach sink to her webbed feet, felt her heart begin to race. In her outrage she exclaimed, “No, no, no! I—I thought we were going back to Gryphon Bay! I—they can’t—I was going to…” she stammered, tears welling in her eyes.

 

     She pulled off her helmet and cast it to the floor, raking her hands through her blue hair. The string came loose and her bun fell into a choppy cut that just barely touched her shoulders.

 

     “Calm yourself. You’re worried over nothing,” the cecaelia said. Jun raised her hand, nearly smacked him before thinking better of it.

“How can you say that?” she wailed. She balled her fists and pounded them against her chest. “I was almost free! I was so close to figuring out who I was and where I came from! And here’s this stupid dummy—” she tossed an arm towards Mari. “—being no help at all!”

 

     She sat back on her knees, dragging her palms over her scaly face. For a moment she was silent. Then after a long, shuddering breath she croaked, “I remember an old song. I think it holds the answers, I just can’t remember the words. But I know the melody by heart; I’ve never forgotten it!”

 

     Jun fixated on the ground, stared hard as she tried to remember. She hummed the melody, quickly and anxiously, and then began to sing. “I ah…I am…The ugly, the…? I am the arcane…? No, that’s not right!” She let out a frustrated growl, pounding her fists on the sides of her head.

 

     The cecaelia told her, “Don’t strain yourself. It hardly matters now.”

“It matters to me!” she cried. “Who are you anyway? Or maybe it doesn’t matter, since we’re all going to die anyway, right?”

 

     At this, the cecaelia almost chuckled. The reaction was so inappropriate, it only made Jun angrier. He replied calmly, “Like most of my kind, I have no true name. But the Alliance calls me Roach.”

“And why’s that?” queried Jun.

“Because no matter how many times they kill me, I always come back.”

 

     “Well, not this time,” sighed Jun. She trudged back to the wall and slid down beside Mari once more. “We’re done for. I give up. I quit!” She turned to Mari, gave her a shove. “Are you happy now, Mari? Is this what you wanted, justice for your precious masters?”

 

     Hugging her knees to her chest, Jun rested her head between them and mumbled, “I don’t even know who you are. But my heart knows that a long time ago, in a place far away, you used to be my friend. You always said that I never knew when to quit.”

 

     She let out a long sigh. “You were right. You were right all along. I should have listened, and now it’s too late.”

 

*

 

     The warm glow of Tekee Mowe was like the sun submerged, leagues and leagues below the Northern Sea. Jun looked through the membrane at all the other globeholders anchored to their rocks, watched free aquarians mill about inside them. She could see the giant globe that contained the Sovereign’s palace in the distance, glowing even brighter than the rest.

 

     She and the other prisoners were only let out three times a day for bodily functions. She once watched Roach expel some kind of black ooze into the chum-bowl before dumping it over a guard’s head. Laughter helped ease the crippling boredom, more than worth the lashings they got later.

 

     As if the pain mattered, Jun thought, because she could hear the whining, droning, squealing of a great leviathan in the distance. It was somewhere near the surface, leagues above. The prisoners were not let out this time. Rather, the guards detached the globe from the globeholder’s chassis and simply let it float towards the surface, even waved farewell in a cheeky display of sarcasm.

 

      Jun pressed her face to the membrane, staring wide-eyed at the shadow above. It dwarfed any ship that she had ever seen. Before long the globe had touched the surface and there they bobbed like a buoy, chunks of ice passing by on all sides. Frost was creeping up the surface of the globe, the current becoming restless as the giant creature approached.

 

     It was some kind of whale, though until now Jun had never seen a whale with an iceberg growing out of its back. The iceberg jutted up from the surface as its host skimmed along the top of the sea. Two long tusks spiraled out from its mouth. They glimmered in the sun like an aurora.

 

     The trio of sirenes flopped about excitedly, chattering about “goddesses” this and “afterlife” that. It was a stark contrast to the dorikoris’ silent horror and Roach’s apparent indifference. The cecaelia suctioned himself to the side of the bobbing globe, doing nothing to help as Jun and Mari tried to escape.

 

     They clawed, they bit, they pounded against the globe, but its surface was so thick and elastic, it was like trying to destroy water itself. A shadow loomed over them as the floeback’s iceberg blocked out the sun. Jun turned to face her doom, gnashed her teeth as she threw her arms around Mari and squeezed her tight.

 

     Mammoth jaws opened to a deep, black void. The globe was deafening with the sirenes’ cheers. Seconds later, all went completely dark.

 

     Jun was violently thrown up and down, side to side as the globe sloshed about in the waves. She kept her hold on Mari, and in turn she felt tentacles wrap around her as Roach kept a hold on them. He held everyone steady as the globe gradually settled. Then it came to a stop, sitting there on the beast’s bumpy tongue. The water was draining from its mouth back into the sea.

 

     The globe emitted its own faint bioluminescence, casting its prisoners in a parti-colored glow. They took this quiet moment to simply catch their breath and examine their surroundings. They were in a giant mouth, sure enough, but the beast was not attempting to swallow them or crush them between its teeth.

 

     At least not _yet_ , Jun thought, and she began pounding against the globe once more.

“I thought you quit,” mentioned Roach. He reclined against the wall while the sirenes muttered in confusion.

Jun glanced back at him and growled, “If you’re not going to help, then shut up!”

 

     “Just calm down and be patient,” he told her. “You’re wasting your energy.”

“What are you—” Jun began. She bit her tongue when she saw several figures emerge from the darkness of the beast’s throat. Her aquarian eyes had finally adjusted and now she could see five in total, all dorikori like herself!

 

     Their armor differed from the blue and white Alliance fare. It was green and black, and rather than buns these mermaids wore their hair shaved close to their heads. Roach waved at them and grinned. “Long time, no see, Ladies!” he greeted.

“You are being detained by the Oceanic Resistance,” one soldier told him flatly.

The cecaelia sighed, “Come on, do you have to be so serious? Tell Ocean to get his rear out here, I’m starving!”

 

     “Silence, Roach,” another soldier growled and gave the globe a kick.

Jun turned to Roach and asked urgently, “Who are these people?”

Roach replied, “Right now, your best friends.”

 

     Before long, someone else emerged from the darkness. A drifting cecaelia, slithering along on eight tentacles. He wore a simple green and black sash of dyed ropes, a black bandana covering his skull. With his aqua skin, the placement of his dark markings and his long nose he could have been the Sovereign’s twin, Jun thought.

 

     This cecaelia was not immobilized by obesity like the Sovereign, however. Rather he was rail-thin and stood well over 6 feet tall, no fancy jewelry or ornaments jangling on his person. Jun thought he looked quite shabby, much like the pirates on some of the ships she’d raided.

 

     He squinted as he approached the globe, mumbling, “Alright, let’s see what we have—oh! Roach, my friend!” His mouth stretched into a toothy grin, exposing sharp, crooked teeth. “Good to see you again! So, what are you in for this time?” He pulled the whale-bone staff off his back and pressed its crystal tip against the globe. With one magical spark, the membrane fizzled away into white smoke.

 

     Roach moved towards him in and they shared a brief hug, tentacles twisting together. “Heinous acts of treason. The usual,” he replied. “I informed Zareen diplomats of Sovereign’s plans. Now, I don’t want to say I _single-handedly_ foiled the attack on Driza, but…”

 

     The shabby cecaelia patted the side of Roach’s face and told him, “You never disappoint. You’ll be compensated for your trouble, don’t you worry.” Then he turned his attention to the other prisoners, trapped in place between the bald dorikori’s spears. “Know anything about them?”

 

     Roach pointed to the sirenes, huddled together in fear. “Those three are cultists.” Then he waved towards Jun and Mari. “Mermaid on the left seems lucid enough, but the undines have a strangle-hold on the other. They may be good candidates for the cause.”

 

     “Very good,” said the other. “Go inside and help yourself to the food. You’ve earned it.”

“Wait!” Jun called after Roach. “You knew about all this? You said we were going to die! You’re a fae—I thought you couldn’t tell lies!”

 

     Roach quirked a hairless brow. “I never said that, Sister. That’s just what you chose to hear.” He turned and began walking away. “Don’t worry. Mr. Ocean will give you a good cerebral scrub.” With that, he disappeared into the darkness.

 

     Jun’s gaze flicked to the other cecaelia standing before her. She queried, “And I take it you’re Mr. Ocean?”

“Leader of the Oceanic Resistance,” he greeted with a smile. In that moment Mari’s pupils shrank to pinpoints.

She shot to her feet, stumbling on her injured leg and cried, “For Aquaria!” before lunging at the cecaelia.

 

     She barely made two steps before the bald dorikori closed in around her. They seized her arms and pinned her on her knees while she struggled. She whipped her gaze to Jun and growled, “He is a traitorous enemy of the Alliance! Kill him!” But Jun held her place, looking between them in confusion.

 

     “I had a feeling she might do that. The undine’s spell is a wicked thing, isn’t it?” said Mr. Ocean to Jun, tone light and flippant. Stooping before Mari, he clutched her jaw with his long, clawed fingers. He waved his opposite hand before her face, fingers undulating like snakes in a smooth rhythm.

 

     Mari fought his grip for just a few seconds, until her eyes rolled back in her head and her whole body went limp. He and the mermaids held her in place while he conjured a spell, hands glowing with green light. “I can return her will to her,” explained Mr. Ocean, “but I can’t return her name. She will only remember what the undine _want_ her to remember.”

 

     “What do you mean by ‘her name’?” queried Jun. She stepped forward, intrigued.

“Her identity. The person she was before the spell took hold.” Mr. Ocean briefly glanced at Jun. He was drawing a sigil of light in the air before Mari’s face, circular and complex. “I think only a divine could move enough magic to fix that. Granted, I’ve gathered a few barnacles, but I’m not _that_ old…”

    

     “ _A divine_ ,” Jun repeated quietly, barely a whisper on her tongue. The trio of sirene cultists huddled nearby, watching Mr. Ocean finish the last lines of his magic sigil.

He scrutinized it for a moment, then muttered, “Hm…Good enough,” before blowing on it.

 

     The sigil shot forth and exploded against Mari’s forehead with a crackle. She jerked back and her eyes focused, rounded and darting every which way. Slowly the mermaids released her from their grip and cautiously stepped back. She sat there on her knees, blinking away the confusion.

 

     Jun kneeled in front of her, grasped her shoulders and asked, “Mari, are you okay?”

“I…I…” the other began, swallowing back her words. She took a deep breath and tried again, blurting, “I’m sorry! I’m so sorry I snitched on us! What was I thinking? I can’t believe…I-I was so…”

 

     A giant grin spread across Jun’s face. She trapped her friend in a hug and replied, “It wasn’t your fault. It’s okay, we’re free now!” She paused, eyes flicking towards Mr. Ocean. “Aren’t we?”

The cecaelia shrugged. “That’s up to you,” he said. “You can go if you want. Just know that Aquaria is a dangerous place for Alliance traitors, and Terria isn’t exactly warm to mermaids.”

 

     Jun’s smile faded. She stood up, pulling an unsteady Mari to her feet as well. “So what do we do now?” she asked.

Mr. Ocean gestured to his soldiers and told her, “Well, the Resistance could always use more hands. If you oppose the Sovereign and all his senseless violence, then we share a common enemy.”

 

     A memory flashed behind Jun’s eyes. She saw the great round blur of the Sovereign in his palace. She felt his claws on her face, felt her heart break and her brain buzz, and she did not recall why.

 

     “I want to kill him,” Mari suddenly snapped. Jun turned to her in surprise. She squeezed Jun’s hand and continued, “The Sovereign sent the undine to steal our names, that’s what Roach said!” She pointed to Mr. Ocean. “I know who you are. Your forces intercepted my battalion once, when we tried to attack a Zareenite ship. We lost that battle and a lot of my Sisters were captured. What did you do with them?”

 

     “The same thing I’ve done with you: Set them free!” The cecaelia smiled and spread his arms. “Some go off on their own, try to unlock their pasts. They usually get killed or captured by the Alliance. That’s why I’m telling you, joining my company is your best option.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Of course, it’s up to you. I am not the oppressive tyrant my brother is.”

 

     Jun’s brows shot up. “The Sovereign’s your _brother_?” she blurted. Mr. Ocean beckoned them with his arm and began slithering down the throat of the floeback.

“Come with me,” he said. “We’ll talk about it.”

 


	4. Cecaelia Brothers

##  **[CHAPTER 4: CECAELIA BROTHERS]**

 

     This wasn’t exactly what Jun would call a “palace”. Mr. Ocean led the mermaids through a fleshy gate and into a slapdash settlement of meat, ice, and driftwood. The floors were squishy and organic, the frostbitten walls slowly pulsating in and out. The whale’s belly was plagued by giant green polyps which had been converted into shelters.

 

     White icicles lined every edge, every surface glimmering with crystals of frost. Jun saw her breath steam out before her, but these frigid temperatures wouldn’t kill any aquarian. And it was only aquarian peoples she saw here; plenty of dorikori with shaven heads, some sirenes and cecaelia. All were clad in green and black.

 

     A giant crystal seemed to be growing on the ceiling, its light illuminating everything in cool tones. The sirene cultists were dragged away by soldiers. To where, Jun wasn’t sure. But Mr. Ocean took Jun and Mari into the largest polyp, and inside was a jungle of glowing, glittering plants.

 

     In the center of the garden was a pool, where the whale’s frostbitten flesh had been carved away and filled with sea water. The round edges were lined with green mushrooms, which seemed to prevent the pool from freezing over like everything else. Their spores had turned the water green and bioluminescent.

 

     Mr. Ocean plunged into the pool, splashed water over his face and rubbed it into his dry skin. Jun knew how he felt. She dehydrated easily too, though she was very reluctant to touch this strange fungus-water.

 

     So she and Mari sat near the edge and he told them, “I know it’s a _bit_ cold and just a _little_ slimy, but you’ll be safe from the Alliance here. The whale is always on the move. We drift for miles around the Northern Sea, foiling the Sovereign and rescuing his victims whenever we can.”

 

     “But why?” asked Jun. “What turned you against your own brother?”

Mr. Ocean leaned back on the edge of the pool, folded his arms behind his head. “My brother’s cause is noble. His methods are just misguided,” he explained. “The pollution has killed thousands, but his wars have killed _millions_. I don’t believe might makes right. Sovereign does.”

 

     He paused, stroking his beard of tentacles. Then he added, “I swear, he didn’t used to be so ruthless. For years— _centuries_ , even—he was known as a kindly shaman. Aquarians from all over the world would see him about their illnesses. He was a curative legend!”

 

     He shrugged. “Still, the terrians kept poisoning our waters more and more, and he just couldn’t keep up. One too many patients died in his hands, and I suppose it hardened his heart. He founded the Aquarian Alliance, and as I watched his influence corrupt the whole ocean with hate, I realized I was the only one who stood a chance in stopping him.”

 

     Mari narrowed her eyes, looking skeptical. “So what do you have to gain from protecting terrians?” she asked. “There _has_ to be more to this than you’re letting on.”

“Hm. Pretty sharp for a thrall,” Mr. Ocean jested, offering a tiny, doleful smile.

 

     “It’s true, I have connections in Terria. People I’ve grown to love very much. Because unlike my brother, I’ve dared to travel beyond Aquaria and see the land for myself. I won’t let these people die by his hand. Not if I have the power to stop it. And I believe I do, if only I can convince others to abandon their hate.”

 

     He gestured vaguely around him. “Just look where hatred has gotten us! Nearly a thousand aquarians lie dead in Driza, and for what? Driza’s pipes are still spewing into the ocean, only now they spew blood.”

 

     With a hard, gurgling sigh, Mr. Ocean shook his head and sank deeper into the green water. “So, there is your _why_. The Sovereign’s motives lie in a desire for revenge, but mine lie in a desire for peace. Aquaria certainly wasn’t perfect before my brother took over, but at least it never knew war. Not like this.”

 

     Mari turned to Jun, Jun to Mari. Between their expressions they shared a brief and silent conversation. Finally Mari looked back to the cecaelia and told him, “I want to join the Resistance.”

Jun’s jaw dropped. She seized the other’s shoulder and whispered harshly, “Don’t!”

 

     “Why not?” Mari jerked her arm out of her grip, gestured to the ceiling. “I don’t even know who I used to be or where I’m from! The Sovereign took that from me, Jun! All I know is that I’m not welcome out there. Why _shouldn’t_ I stay?”

“Because you _don’t belong here_ ,” Jun urged. “We were human beings once and you were important to me. I know you were. I-I can’t remember where we belong, but…”

 

     She paused, eyes falling closed as she shook her head. “But I’m going to find out. No matter what, I’m going to find our names!”

Mari stared her down for a long moment. “You’ll die out there,” she said flatly.

“And you’ll die fighting someone else’s war! It’s not worth it, Mari!” Jun took her friend’s hand. “Come with me. Please?”

 

     The two locked eyes. A long moment passed and Mari’s conflict was written all over her face. Then Mr. Ocean spoke up, said, “You’ve been through a lot, the both of you. Why don’t you stay here for the night? Rest up and think about it.”

 

     His yellow eyes flicked towards Jun. “We should be close to the continent of Halostira tomorrow, somewhere around Odens. That’s a Folkvar Kingdom territory. So if you decide to leave, their laws will protect you.”

 

     He paused, then quickly added, “Just whatever you do, stay away from ships at all costs.”

    

 

*

 

     Accommodations were pitiful. Jun and Mari were put up in a large polyp with at least ten Resistance dorikori. They were to sleep on bedrolls woven from slimy kelp. At least it was just for one night, thought Jun, and then they would head for Odens. That is, if Mari would agree to it. She decided she was done arguing and stormed off to rest her aching leg, leaving Jun to wander off her frustration.

 

     She spotted Roach sitting in a semi-circle with a few other cecaelia. All of them male, Jun noted, and she recalled what the Sea Witch had told her. Turns out it was ringing true, for she didn’t see a single female cecaelia in this bustling place. Roach and his friends were sheltered by a crude driftwood lean-to. Frozen fish dangled from the edge of the roof.

 

     Jun noticed a clamshell bowl between them, full of the same green mushrooms that surrounded Mr. Ocean’s pool. She watched the cecaelia chew them up, wrinkled her nose as they spit the mush into their hands and rubbed it on their skin. She was angry with Mari and unfamiliar with anyone else, so she cleared her throat as she approached them and greeted, “Roach!”

 

     The blue cecaelia grinned wide and waved her over. She took a seat on the edge of the circle across from him, and he said, “I figured you’d be long gone by now, talking the way you were before.”

Jun sighed, drew her knees to her chest and leaned over them. “Yeah, well…Mari’s being a dummy about it. She wants to stay.”

“Huh,” Roach chuckled through his nose. “ _She’s_ the dumb one, is she?”

 

     The mermaid rolled her eyes. “Look, I’m glad _someone’s_ trying to stop the Sovereign, but I’m done fighting other peoples’ battles. I’m done with the whole damn sea! I used to be a terrian and I belong in Terria, so that’s where I’m going to go.”

“They don’t like our kind much, you know.”

“Good. I don’t like our kind much either.”

 

     “Fair enough,” Roach murmured under his palm as he smeared the mushroom-goop onto his face.

Jun just had to ask, “What is that stuff?”

“Greenbrite,” Roach told her. “It feels good. But more importantly, it _looks_ good.” The mermaid squinted, leaning closer. The stuff just seemed to disappear as he rubbed it in.

 

     “I don’t see a difference,” she admitted, and he told her,

“Just wait ‘till nightfall.”

“How can you tell it’s nightfall? We’re in a whale!”

 

     The cecaelia pointed upwards. “When the whale sleeps, the crystal goes out,” he said, “and that’s when this place really lights up!”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Ha. The Alliance just wrings the life out of you, doesn’t it?” Roach smirked as he pushed the bowl of mushrooms towards Jun.

 

     “We light up as bright as we can to catch someone’s eye. Give it a shot, see what you can hook tonight,” he suggested. Jun looked down at the bowl, then back up at him.

She scoffed, “Sounds like a total waste of time.”

 

     The ring of cecaelia broke into teases and laughter. Jun shrank back and scowled at them. She wasn’t sure what social faux pas she was committing here. Though they were all aquarians, this was not the no-nonsense culture she was used to. Roach teased, “Don’t act like you and Mari aren’t attached at the hip, Sister. If you want to go off and start a life with her, you have to do better than this.”

 

     “What?” Jun’s eyes bugged, jaw falling slack. Her posture straightened and she waved her hands. “Oh, no, no! Mari and I—It isn’t—we’re not—”

“You clearly feel _something_ for her,” Roach insisted. Jun opened her mouth to speak, quickly closed it, and sat in silence for a moment more.

 

     After carefully gathering her words she replied quietly, “Yeah, I do. Just not like _that_.”

“Like what?”

“She’s my best friend, Roach. Not my _wife_.”

The cecaelia raised an eyebrow. “What’s the difference?”

 

     Once again, Jun was struck silent. She quickly stood up, stumbled a little and brushed the slime off the skirt of her armor. “You guys are stupid,” she grumbled. Then she was leaving, storming off down the way she came. Roach and the others gurgled with laughter.

 

*

 

     The Resistance dorikori were as cold as the floeback itself. They met Jun with hard glares and cruel whispers. They didn’t trust her, she realized, and they likely wouldn’t until she shaved her head, donned the right colors and pledged her allegiance to the Oceanic Resistance.

 

     But these were not her people and this was not her home. It would never feel like home as long as this mysterious memory beckoned her elsewhere. She would never know peace until she either found it or lie dead. When she finally returned to her quarters, Mari was not there nor was anyone else.

 

     The crystal was growing dim as the whale became drowsy. It would fall asleep any minute, and then the place would fall into darkness. Aquarians were rushing around the plaza, dressed down in beaded swimwear rather than their usual armor. It was strange to see dorikori smiling, laughing, behaving so loosely. Jun was only ever allowed to train and fight, fight and train in her time with the Alliance.

 

     Suddenly the crystal flickered—once, twice, three times. Then it went dark and all was consumed in blackness, including Jun. She’d been searching for Mari in the plaza and now she couldn’t see an inch in front of her face. She stood waiting for her eyes to adjust when she heard heavy drumbeats thrum to life around her.

 

     Slowly, green figures were appearing in the darkness. It was the cecaelia, smeared head-to-tentacle in glowing greenbrite. They illuminated everything around them and when they converged in a swaying, rhythmic mob, the dorikori moved in to join them.

 

     Jun watched the soldiers dance, in such awe that she’d forgotten they were soldiers at all. This was not just an army, she realized. These were refugees who were forced together through tyranny and they had birthed a village, an entire culture all their own.

 

     The rest of the sea was at war, but in the belly of the whale Jun felt separated from all that. For now her troubles were a world away. The cecaelias’ dance was slow and graceful, every movement grand and sweeping. It contrasted yet complimented the more energetic struts and twists of the dorikori. Meanwhile the sirenes lined the outside of the plaza, clapping and beating their drums.

 

     Everything was choreographed like a long-held tradition. Jun had no idea where to begin. She jumped with surprise when a voice spoke directly in her ear. “Shame about my leg, huh?” Jun whirled around and saw none other than Mari, looking back at her with a weary smirk.

 

     The two of them were completely out of place in their Alliance armor, standing on the edge of the plaza like a couple of statues. Jun returned the smirk and took Mari by the hand. Together they watched one more cecaelia slither into the plaza, glowing the brightest of them all.

 

     He was like the sun to their stars, every inch of Mr. Ocean bursting with vivid green light. It beamed from him inside and out, from his mouth and eyes, and by the unsteady way he moved it was clear he’d become intoxicated somehow. The dorikori surrounded him and cheered.

 

     Jun tipped her head to him and queried, “He’s a mess, Mari. You really wanna fight for this idiot?”

“I’m not fighting for him.” Mari’s smile straightened out. “I’m fighting for me and every girl that could become me. I don’t ever expect to find my name, but if I can prevent just one person from losing theirs…” She shrugged. “Then it’s all worth it to me.”

 

     Pressing her blue lips into a thin line, Jun paused for a long moment. “I might never see you again,” she finally said, and it came out much more pathetic than she intended. She felt a gentle, comforting squeeze on her fingers.

“Sure you will,” Mari assured her. “When you find your name, you’ll find your past. That’s where I’ll be.”

 

*

 

     The old floeback droned its morning songs. The crystal in its belly awoke in a burst of light, though some of its residents weren’t so eager to face it. Mr. Ocean looked particularly haggard as he made his way to the front of the whale. The greenbrite had been washed away and the only trace left of the party was his aching head.

 

     Jun, Mari, and a handful of dorikori guards followed him up the throat, through the flesh-gate and onto the whale’s tongue. Mr. Ocean stopped, turned to face Jun. He wearily scrubbed his palm over his eye as he asked her, “You’re sure this is what you want? It won’t be fun out there, I’m telling you.”

 

     The mermaid took a deep breath, nerves rattling her hands. She nodded and replied, “I don’t have a choice. I know how I am. Whether I like it or not, I’ll just never quit.”

Mr. Ocean returned her nod. “I understand. Just remember, there’s a place for you in the Resistance if you ever change your mind.”

 

     “Hold it! Hold the gate!” cried a voice from the whale’s throat. Out marched two more guards, flanking the trio of sirene cultists as they dragged themselves along with their hands. One of the guards said to Mr. Ocean, “We just cleared these three for release. They’re obviously a bit loony, but they pose no risk to the Resistance.”

 

     Mr. Ocean tipped his head to the side, scrutinizing the sirenes. Two males and one female, all quite thin and clad in tops made of layered white shells. The shells clattered on their strings every time the sirenes moved. Each of them wore big smiles and their eyes seemed ever so slightly out of focus.

 

     “I’ll trust your judgment on that…” the cecaelia muttered. With that, he clasped his webbed fingers together and addressed everyone as he said, “The gate will be opening in one minute! Everyone gather your bags, say your goodbyes, et cetera. The town of Odens is directly northeast of here. Good luck to all of you.”

 

     Jun watched as Mr. Ocean and his guards disappeared back down the throat, through the inner gate. Now it was just herself, the sirenes, and Mari. She took in another deep breath and stepped towards her friend. “I have a lot to say and no time to say it,” Jun told her hopelessly.

 

     With a smile, Mari cupped Jun’s head in her hands. She planted a kiss on each cheek, one on her forehead, and finally one on her lips that lingered just a bit longer than the rest. “You saved my life back in Driza,” she reminded her. “I’ve forgotten almost everything, but I’ll never forget that. I’ll really miss you, Jun.”

 

     Jun smiled as she adjusted the bag strapped diagonally across her chest. It was made of woven rope with food and supplies inside. “Thanks. But my name’s not Jun,” she said.

Mari tilted her head. “Yeah? Then what is it really?”

 

     The whale’s jaw was beginning to part. Water was gushing between its massive teeth. Jun stepped up to the tip of its tongue and offered one more smile to Mari. “I’ll get back to you on that,” she told her, and then she was waving goodbye. Mari waved back. She blew Jun a kiss before sprinting off through the inner gate.

 

     Just seconds later, the chamber flooded to the top with a rush of seawater. Jun flailed as she whipped through the cold current, spun like a cyclone, whipped like the wind. She closed her eyes tightly and heard nothing but chaos until finally, all fell calm.

 

     When she opened her eyes, she found herself floating in a vast blue ocean with sunlight above and a black void below. She heard the floeback’s whining call as it drifted away across the top of the water. The world was still spinning before her eyes and she groaned, tried to shake it away.

 

     Her aquatic form had taken the reigns, and now it was responsible for getting her to Odens. She wriggled her tail and dizzily made her way to the surface. The sun nearly blinded her after so much time in the whale’s dim belly. She squinted at her surroundings, saw rolling blue horizons with clouded skies above.

 

     Floating all around her were chunks of ice, possibly broken off larger icebergs. She could see massive ones further in the distance, nearly the size of mountains, and she wondered if they could simply be more floebacks in disguise. This was a terrian’s view of the ocean. They had _no idea_ what kind of madness was happening just below these waters.

 

     Aquaria was a whole different world entirely; one which had always felt alien and surreal, although she could recall nothing different. It was hard to make out shapes in the morning fog, hard to tell what was ship or iceberg, land or waves. The sun just barely pierced through the clouds as a light rain pattered down.

 

     She used it as a compass and oriented herself to the northeast. Just before she dived again, three more faces popped up from the surface. Startled, Jun instinctively reached for the spear on her back. But there was no threat, and now she felt foolish in front of the sirene cultists. They stared at her with their black eyes and their eerie, jagged smiles.

 

     One of them called to her in Universa, “Mermaid! Do you wish to seek salvation with us?”

“Uh…” Jun’s eyes flicked between them. “What are you talking about?”

“Salina and Marina, the ocean divines!” another replied. “It seems we were swallowed by the wrong whale. But that’s why we were given a second chance, for we are destined to be blessed by our great saviors!”

 

     Jun threw up her hands and sighed. “I’m sorry, I don’t have time for this. I have to get to Odens. Good luck with your, um…Pilgrimage.” An instant later, the mermaid was darting away just below the surface. She was but a flash of green, hardly distinguishable from the tangles of kelp and driftwood floating around her.

 

     Jun swam for hours. Every time she surfaced, the lights of Odens burned a little brighter through the fog. She was exhausted, but it was dangerous to linger in the open ocean. She had to keep moving before she was seen, either by the Alliance or a—

 

     A black shadow passed through the murk ahead. It disappeared behind the bottom of an iceberg and Jun whipped to a stop. There were more icebergs all around. Over the groaning and creaking of the ice was another sound, like a keening whine. It echoed off the ice and sent a chill down Jun’s spine.

 

     She was being hunted. That much was clear when a massive monochrome predator rushed her from behind. She darted away just in time and it sped passed her, a flash of sharp teeth attached to a blubbery black and white body. It was nowhere near the leviathan size of the floeback, but it was just large enough to swallow her whole.

 

     Jun had killed one of these beasts before…When she had two dozen other soldiers backing her up. Now she had nothing but her wits and a flimsy second-hand spear. The whale was turning around for another charge. Her tail whipped behind her like a flag in a hurricane, the gills on her neck working overtime as she bolted around the field of icebergs.

 

     She dodged through the murk, thrashed at the dead kelp that tangled around her, slapped driftwood out of her path. The whale was in hot pursuit. It was a large and cumbersome beast. Jun was slight and agile, so when she spotted a hole in the ice she made a sharp turn and passed through it.

 

     The whale was hardly deterred. It stayed in her wake and bashed right into the iceberg. A chunk broke away with a deafening crack and floated to the surface. Jun’s eyes darted back and forth, desperately searching for an escape, a distraction, something, _anything_ to help her.

 

     All that lie ahead was a cold blue void. The whale was closing the distance, she could feel its current on the tip of her tail. Just as it opened its mouth to bite, she wrenched the net of fish off her shoulder and made a sharp turn upwards. The net was snatched by the whale, catching in its teeth and distracting it long enough for Jun to get her bearings.

 

     She poked her head up from the water. Her brows arched when she realized there was a big wooden fishing boat floating in the distance. From beneath the waves, she’d mistaken its hull for another shadowy iceberg. She dived again, saw the whale approaching.

 

     In a split decision, she sped towards the ship. Despite Mr. Ocean’s warning, it was her only chance of escape. A big net shimmering with wriggling fish was ascending to the surface. Jun leaped out of the water with a mighty kick of her tail and latched onto the side.

 

     Below her, the whale whizzed by and just barely grazed the ship with its dorsal fin. Having lost sight of its prey, it disappeared into the field of icebergs once more while Jun clutched the side of the net. Her chest heaved and her webbed fingers quaked against the rope.

 

     Rain was pouring from the dark clouds above. In an instant Jun found herself being tossed onto the slippery deck of the ship. Silver cod flopped all around her. She was face-up in their midst, struggling to see as rain pelted her eyes. Several blurry faces encircled her—the faces of humans, of men, of sailors.

 

     Every one of them looked just as shocked and confused as she did. One of the sailors cupped his hands over his mouth and hollered, “Mermaid! Mermaid on deck!” It seemed to cause a panic. Jun scrambled upright and sat upon her coiled tail, snatching the spear off her back.

 

     The sailors kept their distance and chattered to one another. One more was quickly approaching from the cabin, a scruffy older man with a graying beard. He barked something at his crew but Jun wasn’t paying attention to their words. She frantically turned all around and jabbed her spear at any men who stepped too close.

 

     One voice finally caught her attention when the scruffy man said, “…Take her into the brig and scrape off her scales. They fetch a good price.” Jun’s eyes rounded. She saw the circle of men closing in. If only the rain would stop, she could transform and take a running leap off the side of the boat.

 

     It seemed she had to make do with a tail, and that’s exactly what she did when she fell on her back, whipped it forth and slapped a sailor across the face. The force sent him toppling and then she shot up to her knee, jabbed and swept her spear at the men behind her.

 

     There were simply too many. She couldn’t stop them all. One sailor sneaked up from behind and grabbed her tail, yanked it out and her torso slammed against the deck. Jun felt the spear being tugged and clutched it tighter, but someone was prying her fingers away. It left her hands in a flurry of boots and shouting voices.

 

     Tens of hands seized her and lifted her high above the mob. Jun flailed and growled and cursed on deaf ears. She could hardly be heard over their noise. She looked back at the scruffy man—presumably the captain—smoking his pipe off to the side. He watched her fear with total indifference.

 

     Just then another man ran up to him and gave him a shove. This man was very short and round like a seal, with a mop of long yellow hair and a patchy beard to match. His nose was tinged red, contrasting with his pale white skin. His eyes were as blue and intense as the storming ocean. Jun couldn’t hear their argument, but it was an argument indeed, for the mob of sailors was watching them with uncertainty.

 

     The round man with the yellow hair kept pointing at Jun. She heard a few of his words over the racket. “…Is a person, not a fish…” he said, and Jun quickly realized he was arguing on her behalf. Anxiety trapped her lip between her teeth as she hoped, prayed that he could convince his captain to let her go.

 

     Her hopes fell apart when the argument escalated too far. The round man spit in his captain’s face and rammed him to the ground. Jun let out a hopeless groan as the mob beneath her erupted into chaos. They kept their distance from the two men brawling on the deck.

 

     This didn’t look like a fair fight for the round man, not by a long shot. Yet he was holding his own just fine, rolling atop the captain, pinning him under his weight and delivering blow after blow to his face. Jun cringed as the captain’s cheeks bloomed with welts, blood gushing between his busted teeth.

 

     The round man began to wheeze. He’d exhausted himself and had not the strength to pin his captain anymore. The older man finally managed to seize his wrist and toss him on his back, then he turned to his crew and snarled, “You lot better get this animal off me or you’re _all_ out of the job!”

 

     Jun gasped as she smacked down against the deck. In an instant she was forgotten, and every sailor was rushing forth to rescue their captain. Their bulk consumed both men in a cloud of ragged clothes and salty boots. Jun couldn’t see what happened to her golden-haired little advocate, but she lacked the time or energy to save him.

 

     It pained her soul to leave him there, to leave a debt unpaid as she dragged herself to the edge of the deck. She clutched the side and heaved herself over. The sailors didn’t even notice as she went splashing back into the rolling ocean.

 

*

 

     Odens was still hours away. Jun lost her supplies to the monochrome whale and her spear to the ship. Her muscles ached and she was so exhausted, sleep was claiming her as she swam. Her body was on autopilot. If she didn’t stay alert, someone or something could sneak up on her any moment.

 

     Icebergs groaned all around. Then she heard a long whine echo from the distance and fear rattled through her bones. Jun darted behind a chunk of ice. Cautiously she peeked out, squinting through the distant murk. All she saw was a giant glacier—but no, it was not a glacier. Two long tusks protruded from its front, mottled skin like frostbitten meat, with a heavy iceberg burdening its back.

 

     It was a floeback whale! Jun’s shoulders sank with relief. Perhaps Mr. Ocean would spare more supplies. She would ask him to send a battalion to the ship, so they could rescue that brave sailor who sacrificed himself for her. If she hurried, maybe it wouldn’t be too late.

 

     With the last of her strength, Jun pushed onward. She made a beeline for the floeback’s face and called out in Aquis, “Help! Please, I need help! Open the gate!” Her clicks and pops carried over the waves and the creature’s black eye flicked towards her. She saw her reflection in it as she approached, saw the excitement and desperation all over her own face.

 

     The whale’s jaws were splitting. Water rushed in like a riptide and Jun was quickly caught in its current. She let it pull her, did not fight it as she was sucked into the leviathan’s mouth. Its teeth gnashed behind her and everything went black. She was spinning, spinning, until the water finally drained and then she was left lying on its cold, black tongue.

 

     “Mr. Ocean!” she called aimlessly into the darkness. She shook out her waxy hair and water sprayed every which way. Shortly after, her tail split in twain and she was standing on webbed feet. “Mr. Ocean, it’s Jun! I’m sorry, I just…I-I need help!” She waited there, heard her voice echo off the whale’s throat and nothing more.

 

     “Hello?” She called, squinting in the inky blackness. Her aquarian eyes were beginning to adjust, and now she could see two figures dragging themselves towards her. They were both female sirenes; one a scaly ichthysirene and the other a smooth-tailed cetasirene.

 

     The cetasirene had white and black markings similar to the whale that chased Jun onto the ship. Her black hair was long and straight, body plump and adorned with chunky jewelry made from stones and shells. “Fear not, Mermaid,” she greeted. “My name is Salina, and this is Marina. We heard your call and we only wish to help.”

 

     Salina? Marina? Jun’s eyes refused to blink. She shifted her gaze to the scaly sirene to her left. She was slimmer and more colorful with rainbow scales. Delicate jewelry jingled around her neck and arms. Her wavy hair was coral-pink in color. Jun repeated their names under her breath, looked between them several times.

 

     Nothing about them looked remarkable. They would have blended in with anyone else in Aquaria. Were these really the “divines” the cultists spoke of? “I heard about you,” Jun finally said, pointing vaguely towards them. “I think. I mean—some weird cult-people were trying to find you! Do you know about them?”

 

     “Oh, yes…” Salina sighed with a dramatic roll of her eyes.

The colorful Marina added, her voice high and chipper, “Those cultists are _soooo_ annoying! Why do you think we’re hiding out in this old whale in the first place? Ugh, don’t ever get famous. It’s not worth it.”

 

     “So it’s true,” said Jun. “You’re really divines?”

“For better or worse,” Salina replied, a smile gracing her black lips. “We watch over the ocean and all its peoples. That includes you, Child. So tell us what you seek and we’ll see what we can do. You certainly look troubled.”

 

     “I…” Jun began, her words trailing off with her thoughts. She was still awe-struck, in utter disbelief at where she was and who she was speaking to, what all had transpired before this, and what _could_ happen later. There was so much. There was so much she could have and should have asked for, but the most urgent thing that came to mind was the terrian sailor.

 

     “There’s a fishing ship out that way.” She gestured behind her, towards the whale’s front teeth. “Those sailors were going to take my scales, but one of them saved me. He was a short little guy, a human with hair like—it was yellow, and he had a beard like—well, his eyes were so blue and—”

 

     Her panic was rising, her speech quickening with every word until Marina held up her webbed hands and stopped her. “Okay, okay, slow down!” she giggled. “We’ll take care of him, I promise. But we take care of our own first, so tell us what _you_ want, Mermaid.”

 

     Jun sucked in a deep breath, let it out slow as she explained, “A long time ago, I lost my name to the sea. All I want is to remember who I was so I can go back home.”

“Aaah,” the sirenes murmured in understanding.

Salina said, “So you’re a victim of the Aquarian Alliance? If you ask me, Aquaria was a lot better off before they reared their ugly heads.”

 

     Jun’s brows jumped. “You don’t support them?” she asked. “What about the Resistance?”

“Look,” began Marina, “we deal with _people_ , not politics. Do you know how many civilizations have come and go in my time?”

 

     With a dismissive wave, she chuckled, “Those cecaelia brothers will kill eachother off before long and someone else will take their place, rinse and repeat until the end of time. We used to get involved in that stuff…” The sirene shrugged. “But you know, it’s like swimming against the waves.”

 

     “Indeed,” sighed Salina, turning back to Jun. “We just ride the current now, and it seems you’ve washed up on our shore. So, why don’t we see about your name?”

Jun gasped, hands clasping before her. “You really know my name? Please, please, tell me!”

 

     “We don’t know it,” admitted Marina. She beckoned Jun and the mermaid kneeled before her. “ _You_ do. It’s misplaced for certain, but it’s in there somewhere! Let’s just lay it all out on the table…” With that, she made a fist and her hand lit up in a brilliant golden light.

 

     Slowly she unclenched her fist and grasped Jun by the forehead. Her hand seemed to buzz against Jun’s skin, and an instant later the mermaid went blind with a flash of light. A cacophony of noise surrounded her. A million voices chattering, waves rolling, dishes clattering. Voices that seemed as alien as they were familiar.

 

     Her vision blurred. There was so much chaos surrounding her. Moving images that passed by in a flash. Hazy faces in nonsense places. She was everywhere at once and her body seemed to drift away, no longer part of her as her consciousness whirled through a roulette of lost memories.

 

     Through all the madness chimed a simple melody. She strained to hear it, comforted by its familiarity. A voice was singing to her from the furthest reaches of her soul, the voice that was once her own a very long time ago.

    

“ _Alaine Fontaine of Laraine,_

_Beware, beware the arcane,_

_It drives you insane when it sings in the rain,_

_The ugly, the evil undine!”_

 

     With a long, choking gasp, the mermaid’s body seized and her eyes snapped open, round and bright as the sun. Marina caught her as she fell forward. All was quiet. The sirene gave her a little shake and queried, “Mermaid? Are you okay?” After a long silence, she met Salina with a cringe and muttered, “Oh, dear. Salina, I think I killed her.”

 

     “No. No, I’m okay” the mermaid croaked. Her trembling hands reached up, pushed off Marina’s shoulders and then she was standing. Wobbling but standing, scrubbing her palms over her head. Her vision was returning and so too was her memory. “I’m Alaine,” she mumbled. “Alaine Fontaine of Laraine. I am Alaine Fontaine of Laraine!”

 

     She lowered her hands, looked at the sirenes through wide eyes. A smile was creeping onto her face from ear to ear. “That’s my name! I’m Alaine Fontaine of Laraine! That’s it, that’s it!” She let out a shriek of excitement, jumped up and down before throwing her arms around Marina.

 

     “Thank you, thank you, thank you so much!” Tears began spilling down her scaly cheeks.

Marina giggled and patted her back. “Laraine, is it? Salina, where is that?”

“Southwestern Evik, I believe,” the monochrome sirene replied. She thoughtfully twirled her hair around her finger. “My, that is far from here. She’ll never make it there on her own.”

 

     After a pause, Marina gasped and suggested, “Ooh, call Bubbles! He owes us a favor anyway, that lazy boy!”

Alaine pulled away from her with a sniffle. “Bubbles?”

    

     “Yes, a dear friend of ours,” Salina told her, white teeth flashing behind black lips. “He may look like a beast, but I assure you he’s just the sweetest thing! He’ll get you safely to Laraine in no time.”

 

*

    

     Alaine didn’t know whether to laugh or cry when she met her ride home.

 

     As it turned out, Bubbles was the very same beast that chased her onto the fishing ship. And now these loony divines were telling her to trust it? “Oh, he was just playing! He means no harm!” they assured her, but Alaine had to shoulder a lot of doubt on that one.

 

     In her desperation, she found herself clutching a rope harness fastened through his mouth and around his back as he sped through the sea. She had no other choice. She’d never make it across the Northern Sea is one piece alone, not with the Alliance skulking about. The journey took several days and in that time, she and Bubbles had made their peace.

 

     Bubbles loved to sing and he did so often all throughout the journey. Alaine remembered that she loved to sing too, and in fact, she had wanted to be a singer when she grew up! Her heart sank when she realized…Well, she had already grown up. In the blink of an eye here she was, and she had missed everything in between.

 

     It was all a wash of violence and bloodshed, torture and abuse. The sirenes cleared her fog completely, for better or worse. Alaine remembered all of it now, every last miserable moment of her time with the Alliance. She also remembered every last precious moment in Laraine.

 

     Memories of frog stew dinners lie beside memories of corpse-strewn battlefields. She heard her father sing lullabies while soldiers screamed in agony. She remembered Deanne warmly placing a crown of bluebells on her head, remembered Mari coldly accusing her of treason.

 

     _Oh, Deanne_ …It broke Alaine’s heart, knowing she was so powerless to find her. But if she ever had the opportunity, she swore she would deliver her name. Perhaps it would convince Deanne to leave the Resistance and come back to Terria with her.

 

     For she and Bubbles had arrived on the swampy coast of Southwestern Evik, and once she waved the creature goodbye, she was left utterly alone. She didn’t know what she would find when she returned to Laraine. Would her parents still be there? Her stomach churned as he tromped through the mud, watching for peatcreeps all the while.

 

     She didn’t have to know the way. She only had to sing a song.

 

     _“I am Alaine Fontaine of Laraine,_

_And now I know my name,_

_But I’m all alone, can’t find my way home,_

_Won’t you show me the way?”_

 

     A hundred yellow eyes blinked to life in the shadows of the forest. They glared at her as several voices called out, “The last part didn’t rhyme!”

“Well, Cypressca never complained!” Alaine called back, stamping her foot in the mud. Low murmurs spread through the trees, repeating the old dryad’s name.

 

     Suddenly branches cracked and whorled around her, a hundred wooden arms pointing to the east. Alaine tipped her head and thanked them before rushing off, and behind her the eyes disappeared like dying flames.

 

     At last, she was returning with mermaid scales just like she promised. But ten years had passed since her father fell ill and she feared the worst. Surely she was too late to save Sebastian, but what of Rene? What of the Duponts and the rice farmers, the shopkeepers, friends, and neighbors? The nymphs in the forest?

 

     Alaine still had a community here. She was a Larainian and Larainians always took care of their own, that’s what she was told. This was where she belonged, in this cozy fetid swamp full of salvage and sewage. If she truly was a terrian, then the pollution meant nothing to her. She was _home_.

 

     The lights of Laraine greeted her as she stepped into the clearing. The glow of the hanging lanterns brought warmth to her heart and soul, despite the dread bubbling in the depths of her gut. White teeth flashed between blue lips and Alaine squealed in delight, sprinting across the long wooden bridge over the swamp.

 

     Her Alliance armor was tattered, hair messy and loose, skin smeared with mud. It didn’t matter. She was home, she was finally home, and she announced it to every villager on every walkway. “I’m home! I’m Alaine Fontaine! I’m Alaine Fontaine and I’m finally home in Laraine!”

 

     Faces turned towards her, curious at first. Then as she moved closer their expressions fell to ones of terror. Yelps and shrieks filled the air, cries of “Aquarian! They’re back, they’re back!” as villagers repelled from her like oil from water. Alaine stopped on the main walkway, watching as everyone around her quickly disappeared indoors.

 

     “Wait!” she called. “This is my home! I’m one of you! I’m Alaine!” The last stragglers were making their way inside, doors slamming shut all around. In less than a minute the bustling village had turned into a ghost town in the middle of this clear afternoon, and Alaine stood alone in the midst of it.

 

     Her lungs felt tight, her stomach unsettled. The mermaid cautiously made her way towards her old house, searching for any signs of life. All she saw were fearful eyes peeking at her through moldy wooden shutters. Of course they feared her, she thought, she was an aquarian now!

 

     But her mother would surely see her as she always had. Alaine would always be Rene’s child, whether she was scaly and green, whether she had gills or a tail or not. So Alaine rushed down the walkway, passed the rice farms and the tailor, down the way to her old house. She still remembered the way as if she’d walked this path yesterday.

 

     Its tree was still there, tall and mighty. Alaine gasped, nearly tripped as she came to a stop. She stared at the remains of a treehouse, dangling off the trunk like a parasite. The rest of the house was but a pile of debris lying in the water below. The debris was green with algae and rot. Clearly it had been this way for a very long time.

 

     Alaine stared, unblinking for a long moment. She pressed her hands to her mouth, turned all around in search of comfort but found none. Tears welled in her eyes. Her knees felt so weak that she staggered, nearly collapsed as she turned away and walked back the direction she came.

 

     “What happened…?” she croaked beneath her hands, eyes darting all around for answers. She found none. Laraine was just slightly different than it was ten years ago, with a few new buildings and a few more missing. Perhaps she was jumping to conclusions. With her husband and daughter out of the picture, Rene likely moved somewhere smaller.

 

     Yes, of course, she thought. The mermaid took a deep breath, tried to calm her racing mind. She made her way to the Duponts’ house just down the path. She had always been like another grandchild to them. She would tell them that Deanne was alive and well, that she was fighting for the Oceanic Resistance.

 

     Her grandparents were a fairly affluent couple. Perhaps they could hire mercenaries, sailors, _someone_ to deliver her name to her. Alaine would lead the whole crew, show them the secret base in the belly of a whale. She knew she could do it, if only she had some decent sellswords by her side.

 

     The wooden stairs groaned under her feet as she stepped up to the Dupont’s front door. She knocked with urgency, called, “Gramma and Grampa Dupont? Hello? It’s me, Alaine!” She tried to peek through the window, but the curtains were drawn behind the shutters. No light from under the door, no rustling from behind it.

 

     “Are you there? I won’t hurt you, I—I know I look a lot different since the last time you saw me.” Alaine sighed, swiped at the back of her neck. She glanced around, felt the scrutiny of other villages from their windows. “I have news about Deanne! Please, will you come out and talk to me?”

 

     Nothing but silence. Alaine pounded her fist on the door. “Please?” she called louder. Another silence. Her heart began to race again. “Please talk to me! I’m not a monster!” Her tone was drowned in panic as she wept, beating on the door with all her might. “I’m not a monster, I’m not a monster, I’m not! I am Alaine Fontaine of Laraine!”

 

     With a mighty kick, the rotting hinges finally gave way. The door swung open and hit the wall with a booming thud. Alaine’s jaw was set tight, shoulders hunched in shame. She fought back her tears and sheepishly poked her head in the doorway. The house was nothing like she remembered.

 

     Nearly all of the furniture was gone. Anything left over was flipped and covered with cobwebs and mold. The place had been vacant for years. “No, no, no, no…” Alaine muttered as she turned and rushed away aimlessly, pawing at her sweating face. Her feet took her down to the docks, where reeds and flowers sprouted through the damp planks.

 

     Her hands swiped some bluebells. Her fingers tied them into a circlet as she sat there on the walkway, feet dangling into the filthy water. A hundred boats floated nearby, groaning and knocking together like wooden chimes. She didn’t see her family’s leaky little rowboat anywhere. It had disappeared along with the house and her parents and everyone she knew.

 

     Alaine placed the bluebell crown atop her head. Then she drew her scaly knees to her chest, hugged them close and sobbed between them. She didn’t belong in Aquaria, she didn’t belong in the Empire, and evidently she didn’t belong here either. There was no place for her anymore, not anywhere.

 

     She was so lost in her tears, she didn’t notice the soft footsteps creeping up behind her. A voice gently rasped, “Alaine Fontaine? Is that really you?” The mermaid whirled around with a start. A feeble, white-haired old man with warts on his face stood before her, dressed in long green robes.

 

     “Mr. Hut!” Alaine gasped, scrambled to her feet and threw her arms around him. The old man hesitated, hands hovering over her back before he committed to an embrace. His body was tense. When Alaine withdrew, she saw the fear and apprehension in his eyes as if she were diseased.

 

     “My old house is gone,” she said, swiping her tears away with the back of her hand. “Everyone’s afraid of me and I can’t find my parents. Please tell me what happened!” Mr. Hut’s cloudy eyes looked her up and down, one eyebrow quirked above.

 

     “I should ask the same of you,” he began. After an uncertain pause, he continued, “You disappeared so very long ago, Alaine. It must have been…My word, about a decade now! All of Laraine searched for you and the Dupont girl for weeks until—”

 

     The man bit his tongue, eyes drifting sheepishly off to the side. “Well…”

“Tell me, Mr. Hut. I need to know,” urged Alaine.

With a deep sigh and a nod, he continued, “Your parents are no longer with us. I’m afraid your father succumbed to his illness shortly after you disappeared. And your mother, she was so heartbroken that she…”

 

     He shook his head, couldn’t look the girl in the eye. “Sebastian always said that drink would be the end of her. Your father was a good man, Alaine. I know he loved you more than anything in the world. That was clear to me when he worked his hands to the bone for so many years. He told me he wanted a better life for you.”

 

     Alaine’s eyes were stinging again. She swallowed back the lump in her throat, stomach tight with grief. Mr. Hut went on, “And your mother, she did her best with what she had. I knew her since she was born, and the only time I ever saw that woman smile was after she had you.”

 

     The mermaid dropped her head into her hands. She felt Mr. Hut’s hand on her shoulder, his touch more confident than before. “You made them happy,” he told her.

“Well, I’m glad they’re gone,” she sniffled behind her hands. She wiped her tears and croaked, “I would never want them to see me like this! I’m a monster and it’s all my own fault!”

 

     She gnashed her teeth, wobbling knees forcing her into a crouch. “I was trying to get mermaid scales for my dad. Deanne told me it was stupid. I should have listened! W-where are the Duponts? I have to tell them she’s alive!”

Mr. Hut’s mouth stretched into a thin line as he replied solemnly, “Claimed by time, I’m afraid.”

 

     Alaine let out a long, shuddering sigh, shaking her head in disbelief. After a moment she asked, “What happened to my old house? Can—can we rebuild it? I’ll work on your farm! I’ll be the hardest worker ever, just like my dad, and I can—”

Mr. Hut crouched beside her, stopping her with a hand atop hers.

 

     “Alaine,” he began, “I’m afraid that…That Laraine is not a good place for you. We suffered a terrible attack here after you left. Aquarian soldiers—some brutes calling themselves the ‘Alliance’—they showed up in broad daylight and destroyed property. They ransacked the village, slaughtered men like animals…”

 

     He furrowed his wrinkled brow. “The people are still healing after that terrible day. I believe that for their peace of mind and for your own safety, it’s best if you stay far, far away from here.”

“What?” Alaine’s eyes rounded. She quickly stood up, wobbled as the blood rushed to her head. “I-I can’t come back? No! No, please, let me stay! I would never hurt anyone. I’m not a thrall anymore, I’m _free_!”

 

     The man regarded her with a solemn frown. “They will never trust a mermaid. Not when mermaids have stolen their daughters away and slain their sons for so many generations.” He paused. “I remember the day you were born, how proud your father was. He carried you all the way to the farm just to introduce you to me, and I have known you ever since. Do you know how it would pain me to see you slain by some spiteful villager?”

 

     “There is no place for you in this miserable swamp,” he continued, pointing towards the main bridge. “Sebastian always said you were destined for better places. So please, go make him proud, Little One.”

 

     So many emotions twisted their way through Alaine’s gut. Sorrow, anger, betrayal...She opened her mouth and threatened to dramatically spill it all. Then she thought better of it, snapped her jaw tight and stooped over to pinch one of her scales.

 

     A harsh growl ripped through clenched teeth as she tore the scale free. Blood trickled down the back of her calf but it mattered not. She held it out to Mr. Hut with tearful eyes and a blood-stained palm. “I know it’s not legal to have this,” she croaked. “But promise me you’ll keep it around after I leave? In case someone gets sick.”

 

     Mr. Hut’s eyes flicked to the scale, up to Alaine and then back again. Finally he took it with a solid nod and said, “You have my word.”

 

*

 

     _AUTUMN, 5996_

 

     Alaine never thought she’d find herself back in Driza.

 

     The city was on lockdown since the Alliance’s attack. Foreigners—especially aquarians—were scrutinized and often turned away at the gate. It wasn’t until she dropped Roach’s name that she was permitted inside, though the scrutiny didn’t stop there.

 

     Alaine was shut in a holding cell for 72 hours and bombarded with registry paperwork before she could finally walk the grimy streets as a refugee.

 

     A _refugee_ , not a citizen. She would never be a citizen of this empire now, thanks to the Sovereign.

 

     The city was just as filthy and overcrowded as the last time she was here. Since the battle, mermaids like her weren’t exactly welcomed with open arms. But this place was just a means to an end, a way to find work, save money, and eventually make her way to somewhere better. Perhaps Folkvar Kingdom, where she could find acceptance and an education.

 

     As time dragged on, Alaine’s dreams wilted like her crown of bluebells. School seemed further and further away from reality by the year. She was twenty now, with hardly a coin to her name despite how she worked herself ragged. No one in the Empire was racing to hire mermaids for anything—not after the horror they suffered so recently.

 

     So Alaine found herself at a dingy old inn on the docks. What she did was entertain the sailors, whether by song, dance, or more unchaste means. Those means were to an end, she repeated to herself. Day after day, month after month, and year after year.

 

     As the sun set on another long day, a massive trade ship pulled into the port, dumping sailors into the inn by the dozens. Alaine donned her flamboyant feathery two-piece, picked up her lute and took the stage, hoping to charm the coins from these drunken terrians’ pockets.

 

     Her fingers strummed skillfully over the strings of this instrument, a “gift” from the innkeeper that she was still paying off years later. But its melody soothed her soul and her voice silenced the patrons’ drunken warbling when she sang her jaunty tune:

 

     _“Alaine Fontaine of Laraine,_

_Beware, beware the arcane,_

_It drives you insane when it sings in the rain,_

_The ugly, the evil undine,_

_Alaine Fontaine of Laraine,_

_Heart bigger than her brain,_

_Battled the ocean and caused a commotion,_

_Then her life was on a chain,_

_Alaine Fontaine of Laraine,_

_Was sure she’d lost her name,_

_Now forced to slay, as a thrall of the fae,_

_Would she ever be the same?_

_But Alaine Fontaine of Laraine,_

_Could never be contained,_

_She broke free of her spell, escaped from her hell,_

_And betrayed the Sov-er-eign_

_I am Alaine Fontaine of Laraine_

_And my heart has been unchained,_

_I’m free from the sea, to be what I’ll be,_

_Albeit a little…Crazy!”_

 

     Alaine stopped the tune, flashed a cheeky grin. Her audience’s captivation snapped like a twig and they immediately began booing her.

“That doesn’t rhyme!” they cried. “Come on, Lady!”

She feigned alarm for a moment, then strummed the lute again and finished her song properly:

 

_“Alaine Fontaine of Laraine,_

_Her last line didn’t rhyme,_

_Does it drive you insane, enough to complain?_

_Well, she hears it all the time!”_

    

     With that, smiles returned to their faces and the booing roared to cheers and laughter. Alaine took a bow to the left and to the right, turned her back to them and bowed extra low. The cheers grew louder and she already heard men calling to her, turned to see whistling patrons waving money in the air for a dance.

 

     The mermaid let out a sigh, forced a pretty smile and danced her way to their tables. Another long, disgraceful night lie ahead of her, followed by another lonely day. _A means to an end, a means to an end, a means to an end_ , she thought. But would the end ever come?

 

     Among the earthy faces of dworfs, humans, satyrs, and trolls, an alien figure caught her eye in the smoky darkness. It was none other than Roach, sitting in a corner table with three armored terrians. He waved her down and she waved back, pushing through her patrons to greet him.

 

     “Roach! I haven’t seen you in years! Where have you been?” Alaine gasped. The cecaelia nonchalantly tipped his head side to side.

“Wherever Mr. Ocean points me. This time he’s pointed me to you. I’ve been tracking you down for days, so it’s a relief to finally find you. This city is a toxic waste-dump. Not my favorite place to be.” He wrinkled his nose, light glinting off the fish hook in his nostril. Gesturing to the men behind him, he said, “Let’s speak somewhere more private.”

 

     Alaine’s gaze flicked over to the human trio. At least she _assumed_ they were human, for the tallest and thinnest of them wore a head-wrap that covered all by his eyes. The skin around them was brown, his glare sharp and intense.

 

     The second-tallest man was a mountain of muscle with short-cropped hair the color of straw. His right leg was amputated just below the knee with a peg in its place. There was a machete on his hip and an iron shield on his opposite arm. His skin was peachy, tinged pink by the sun.

 

     Then there was the shortest man and he was the shortest by far, round like a baby seal with his long yellow hair hanging loose over his shoulders. His robust beard was pulled into a knot, his eyes as blue as the ocean. He looked so familiar. Alaine furrowed her brow, staring him down for a moment before hesitantly leading them down the hall.

 

     She stopped in her room; barely more than a broom closet with a cot in the corner. The door squeaked like a dying rat as she closed it behind them. The five of them were pushed nearly shoulder-to-shoulder in the tiny space. Alaine turned to Roach and queried, “Have you seen Mari lately? I have a message for her, it’s very important!”

 

     “Then you can tell her yourself,” said Roach, tipping his head towards the muscled man. “I’ll let him explain.”

The man offered her a polite smile and greeted, “Hello, Miss. My name is Evan Atlas, captain of the Freelance Good Guys. These are my associates, Luke and Glen.”

 

     Alaine stared at the short man once more. He was staring back at her with the same intensity. Evan continued, “We are but simple mercenaries and we mean you no harm. We’ve been hired to find some young girls who’ve gone missing from Kingsfall Swamp, and Mr. Roach here told us you may have some information about that.”

 

     Alaine broke her stare with the short man, eyes flicking back up to Evan. “Me?” Then they flicked to Roach. “Why me?”

Roach replied, “You were a swamp-girl, weren’t you? You’ve experienced first-hand what happens to these kids. You can show these men where they’re taken, show them the ins and outs of Gryphon Bay. The Resistance will have your back if you decide to shut it down.”

 

     The mermaid’s brows arched. She fumbled for words, stammered, “Guys, I’m sorry, but I’m done with the sea. I’m trying to build a life in Terria here, I can’t just leave everything behind!”

The cecaelia looked around and chuckled, “Leave _what_ behind? That broom in the corner? Those obnoxious drunks in the bar?”

 

     He shook his head. “Look, we’ve heard some mumblings from the cultists. They speak of a mermaid who remembered her name and I _knew_ who it must have been.” He grinned. “After all, are you not Alaine Fontaine of Laraine?”

 

     They waited through a long pause from the mermaid. Her jaw hung a bit slack in bewilderment, uncertainty in her shifting eyes. “I found Salina and Marina,” she finally told him. “They helped me remember who I was.”

“Salina and Marina? The ocean divines?” the short mercenary blurted with a big toothy grin. “Hey, I met ‘em too! They crammed a magic rock in my chest ‘cause I—”

 

     “Glen, please. Let’s be professional,” Evan muttered with a soft nudge.

“Wait. I want to hear what happened,” said Alaine. She squinted at Glen, pointed an uncommitted finger at him. “Go on.”

 

     Glen went on casually, “Oh yeah, years ago I got in some trouble at work. Had to walk the plank ‘cause ya know how shite happens. Then a big ‘ol whopper hits the boat and everyone goes flyin’! The beast swallows me up and there they are. Salina and Marina themselves, just sittin’ in its belly waitin’ fer me.”

 

     He shrugged, “I dunno, I guess they wanted to reward me ‘cause I punched out my crummy boss. A real bilge-sucker that guy was, tryin’ to skin a mermaid like yerself! That ain’t right. I mean, look at ya! Ya ain’t no animal! Singin’ pretty songs in this dump, just tryin’ to make a livin’ like the rest of us. Feck, I’m glad he’s dead!”

 

     Alaine’s eyes widened, jaw slack behind her hands. Her eyes shifted between all the people before her, then stopped on Glen once more. Evan quirked an eyebrow and asked, “Are you alright, Miss? You look rather pale.”

 

     “I know you! I know who you are! And I never got to repay you for saving my life,” she told Glen breathlessly. She turned to Evan. “Okay. I’ll do it. I’ll help you in any way I can…” She paused, then she turned to Roach. “But under one condition. _You_ have to take me to Mari.”

 

     Roach’s blue lips parted, exposing a jagged grin. “Of course! She’ll be joining us anyway, when we infiltrate Gryphon Bay and silence those damn undine.”

 

     Alaine wasted no time packing. She had just one chest of belongings stuffed under her cot, and buried at the very bottom was a tattered suit of Alliance armor.

 

     Pulling it up before her, she announced, “I still have this. Can you believe it?”

Roach eyeballed its blue and white exterior. He said, “Not a fan of those colors. I think green and black would look _much_ better on you.”

Alaine scratched at her neck, considered it for a long moment. “I don’t think so,” she said.

 

     Then she asked the Freelance Good Guys, “What colors do you guys wear?” 

 

**END**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading!


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